


Red

by Tiz



Series: Colour of Roses [5]
Category: Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Liveship Traders Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Tawny Man Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Genre: Action, Angst, Fantasy, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Off Stage Rape/Non Con, Intrigue, M/M, Plot Driven, Plotty, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-03 00:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 62,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1724363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiz/pseuds/Tiz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Red Rose Blooms<br/>We shall be on our own<br/>Shall we find the truth beyond<br/>What is already known?</p><p>When the Red Rose Blooms<br/>Ancient errors have to be paid.<br/>When freewill is at stake<br/>What is left to trade?</p><p>(Fragment of "When the Roses Bloom" by FitzChivalry Farseer)</p><p>[The world of the Realms of the Elderlings belongs to Robin Hobb and to the rightful owners of the rights. No money for me here. :)]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rhododendron

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serie11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/gifts).



> Last true part of Colour of Roses! It won't be as long as Blue, but it will be longish. Things are wrapping up :D
> 
> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D 
> 
> I have got a ARC of the new book. For some things it is better than I expected, but for other things it is even worse.  
> UGH.  
> Robin Hobb has really lost a lot of creativity, if you ask me.

 

 

** Chapter 1: Rhododendron **

 

 

_In the year that would be the Last Year, we came, as we have always done, on the Sacred Place In The West to be part of the_ _Sakhadzibe. For we are the Idu'ianyr, and we are the True People. The Ligey Shomorokh talked and smoked and decided. The Khangitche defined the hunting ground for the Year To Be._

_We sang. We danced. We traded. Ten tribes, the Vadul-Alais, Anaoul, Lavren, Olyuben, Omok, Penjin, Khodynt, Shoromboy, Yandin and Yandyr were already there, but the Chuvan, the Odul and the Khoromoy had not yet arrived, a flood leaving them behind._

_But still it was a good time, as it had been since the time beyond time._

_And then the Black Death came roaring from the Sky, breaking the night in two halves. And those tribes who had been at the_ _Sakhadzibe were killed and maimed, and the Sacred Place laid in ruin afore them. The Black Death roared, and fire scorched our skins. It broke down on the Sacred Houses where the Children of all the Tribes slept together, to remind themselves they were all Children of Idu'ianyr. And so it was the Black Death killed our future, for of the Ten Tribes that were there was not a child in twenty surviving and many of those maimed so that they had to be given the Death Potion to ease their pain into the next words. Then Black Death left, roaring, before our Shamans could understand, before our warriors could stand to fight._

_When the Sun came, He was so ashamed to shine on the ruins and wails that He hid himself behind a cloud, and the sky wept with us as it had never been seen in that season._

_What we had traded for was spoiled. The meat that should have sustained us was buried in the ruins. Shamans had died. We had not known about the Black Death. We had not known how to defend ourselves._

_So we died._

_For a moon and a moon we stayed in the destroyed place, and when the_ _Chuvan, the Odul and the Khoromoy tribe arrived they tried to help us as they could. Many a woman wept. Many a man shed his own blood as tear for the death and dying, and for the destruction of the Sacred Place._

_So we went to the Weak People who live every moon of every year in the same place instead of following the reindeer and the buffalo, and took what they had, for they were weak and weaker than they used to be._

_For three years we did so, and every year we came to weep in the Defiled Place. Every year we counted less of the Idu'ianyr. Many of us had died, killed by Black Death. Many more had died fighting the Weak People to get enough food to last the harsh winters._

_Old people, who are wise, died first, and young people who have more fire in their vein than wisdom in their heart had gone beyond getting food, and saw the Weak People as unworthy of what they had. Many of them were angry that the Black Death had struck us, and not them. Such is the folly of youth._

_Then he came, riding on the destroyed road. He was alone and without weapons, but he was not afraid because he brought Truth with him. For this, we call him He Who Rides Alone. He spoke, and the old women and the Ligey Shomorokh of the Vadul-Alais tribe listened. Then they called far and wide for all the tribes, so that they too could hear._

_So for the first time in three years we called a Sakhadzibe. We were few. The Olyuben and Penjin tribes are no more. The Anaoul tribe does not have enough men to hunt the reindeer and only one Shaman. People who knew how to make the salmon skin soft and better than silk are all gone. So are people who knew how to braid the tall kar-gath grass into sturdy mats and to make them into saddles for the horses and into walls for our yurkas. Those skills are all gone. There is no one who knows them anymore._

_So He Who Rides Alone spoke of the Black Death, and called it a "dra'kon"._

_He spoke._

_And we listened._

_Overheard from an Iduyan's conversation_

_in the outskirts of Liantharin._

As much as I would have liked to dwell on my newfound discovery, such was not to be. I was still the King, and there were still duties to carry on, whatever little I cared for them.

I forced my errant thoughts in order. It was an effort. I drove myself to observe the body of the Shaman. It had been brought inside the Ice Room with all it had on. A wise decision. If the Shaman had some charms on itself, they could do grave harm to the unwary. I found several of those, but most of them were of Iduyan's craft. Small, simple things to keep insects at bay, not unlike the one I myself had used in the Jungle, or to purify water and attract prey. I put those aside uneasily. It had always seemed wrong of me, to use magic to attract an animal to kill it. Such is not the way of the hunt. But it was only after I had stripped away its tunic, panting with effort for the way the congealed blood had glued it to its back, that I found the most distressing one.

It lay over its back. I found myself backing away from the object I had unwitting revealed. Short rods of a crystal glass marked with shrieking black symbols were fastened to each other at chaotic angles. Ominous beads were dangerously interspersed with them. The charm was broken in the middle by my own axe, and the white of the backbone and the red of the blood broke that tortured expanse of whites and blacks. As I stared at it, my mouth went as dry as parchment, I knew with absolute certainty that, had the charm been whole, I would not have been able to see it. As it was, the thing terrified me. It was not the mindless fear that Jinna's charm had once inspired in me. No, it wasn't made to instill fear. I feared the charm for the same reason I had feared the Forged ones at my first sight of them: As I could then not perceive them with the Wit, I could now not perceive the charm. I stared, dumbfounded. I could see it. I reluctantly put my hand over the beads. They were cool and smooth. And yet something in me told me that that charm was not there.

I stared at it so hard that my eyes watered, and the water turned cool over my still burnt cheeks. It was a strange thing. I do not claim anything more than a passing knowledge of charm's magic, but I do know some of its codes. Wooden beads, brightly coloured and tied with leather or strings and oftentimes furs or feathers. Pink for love charms, red to rouse lagging passions, green for good crops. But this one was made of glass beads, white or of a transparent black, and tied with black leather, that looked naturally so, not dyed to match a desired colour. Nothing more. It was stark in its simplicity, and yet it bespoke of a greater mastery of the art than many other, more gaudy ones that I had seen.

I slowly, reluctantly, peeled the broken thing from the shaman's back. I did not relish the task. Then I went to work.

I had almost finished my examination when my hands closed on a pouch, next to the skin of its breast. Cold sweat broke on my brow. I knew what I would find even before opening it. It was a pocket of rough skin, closed with leather string made stiff by blood. I had a hard time with the latch. It held pieces and fragment of White charms, their power sapped by the ages. I looked down, blankly. Charm magic is not one that speaks to me. I knew not what power, if any, those crystal beads and frayed strings still had. They did not speak to me as the broken charm on the shaman's back had, but I was all the more grateful for it.I closed the pouch again and debated about bringing it with me. The choice was swift: I could not leave it there, nor I could leave the stranger one. As I turned to leave I wondered to whom I could ask. I knew several shamans that crafted for Vietmaran's Houses. But where one shaman was a traitor, others could be. Then, as I made my way betwixt the frozen shelves and hanging, butchered carcasses, I smiled. The Fool had made studies of charms once. I doubted he had not continued them in Clerres. I would ask him.

As I stepped out of the room the heat hit me like a hammer. I had to stop to catch my breath. I had not realized I had been shivering, but now my hands trembled slightly. I closed the Ice Room's door behind me and leaned over it, peering in the corridor ahead. It was full night now, and the lamps cast the light, filling the air with the flowery smells of scented oils. I had not realized how cold it was in the Ice Room, nor how much it had prevented my burns from stinging. I could feel it all the more keenly now. I groaned and grit my teeth, waiting for the first flush of blood to reawaken the pain. Then I breathed out and went to my quarters, the charms in a safe bundle in my arms.

My mind went back to the Little Lady's words. My spirit sank as I examined them in all angles.  Of course. It was so obvious. Kuan and Chun doom was approaching. It was less than two years now and then the Shining Heir would come of age. Her father would have to give up the crown to her, or risk the ire of all of Clerres. I knew Uzkabat was already preparing to come in aid of the Shining Empress. So was Vietmar, for we had pledged our alliance to Li-Huan. Behit, too, would not wait one day more than necessary. After the Civil War and the endless fights against the Iduyans, Liantharin was near to collapse, if not there already.

The only possibility for Kuan was to disgrace the White Prophet that had made the ruling as a false prophet. As such, he could keep the throne, for all that it was worth now.

I shook my head, marveling at what lengths people would come to gain and keep a crown, even one of a failing country. Even at the price of the destruction of it.

And yet even as I walked in the carved halls of my Palace, between the bowing of the servants, I was uneasy. It fitted. Every pieces of the puzzle was precise against the other. The picture made sense in my mind.

Yet why did I feel it was wrong?

 

 

I came back to my quarters and shut the door behind me. One of the few privileges of royalty is that no one dares to question you, or to block your way. None did with me that day, at any rate.

I sagged against the door, letting my head roll against the wood. With the last of my strength I put the charms in one of my favorite bags, empty now. I was so very tired. I hungered for Snowcloud, for our bond and her comforting presence at my side. She was coming back, that I knew. Reluctantly, I decided not to contact her. It would do neither of us any good, and would only worry her. I sighed and scrambled to my feet, taking my burden with me. The room was empty. There was a fire burning in a massive fireplace, filling the room with heat and a pleasantly resinous scent. I breathed in. The crackling of the fireplace mingled with the soft noise of rain outside. It was a good year, I thought vaguely. The rain would make the crops grow well. I sat in front of the fireplace, with my back at my armchair. My whole body ached. The burns pulled at my skin. I closed my eyes and groped for the links I had with Chyne and Bitter Moon.

It was a hard. I was tired and depleted and they were far away from me. Still, I managed to convey them the general outline of the last days, if not the particulars. They, too, were tired from fighting, and from the Jungle. I had expected that. The Jungle can sap the strength of the strongest man. No words were exchanged. It would require more energy than we had. Yet when I closed the link I knew they were on their way back, and soon to see the White Road, and they knew I had fought and killed the Shaman. It was something.

I groaned and opened my eyes, unseeing. I would have to contact Vien and ask him about the Little Lady. I would have to alert my spies on Vietmar and Liantharin, to gauge what I had just learnt. Soon, I promised myself. I rested my head over the chair and closed my eyes.

I think I would have slept there and then. Perhaps I did. When I opened my eyes again it may have been a second or an hour after. A rich blanket covered me, and a cushion had been welded between my nape and the chair so carefully that I had not noticed it. I blinked and stood up, moving my neck to banish the stiffness. Then I turned my head and saw him.

He was sitting at my desk, pouring over the ancient scrolls. He did not turn his head to me, but I knew he was aware of my movements. His sleek brown hair fell on his shoulder like a cascade of brocade, the old gold brought forth at every leap of the flames. He was dressed in simple clothes of orange and warm cream. Women clothes, a long tunic and ample trousers. He was more kneeling over the chair than sitting upon it, and both his elbows were on the desk, his long fingers supporting his lean face. I looked at him and bit my lips.

"Thank you for the blanket."

He snorted and raised his dark eyes to meet mine.

"Don't mention it." He paused. He seemed to know I had something to tell him. Perhaps he did.

I took a deep breath. "I went to examine the Shaman's body. He had some charms over him. The Little Lady was there, as well."

The light of the fire danced over his face. His colouring was not unlike those of some people of Clerres. Almost the same hue as Chundra's. Almost, but not quite. There was a hint of gold, a subtle shade of amber. Something that caught and marveled with the edge of one's vision. The fire enhanced it, made him almost a creature of burnished gold.

I walked to him sitting on the desk. Silently, he made space for me, dragging the scrolls away.

"The Shaman belonged to a group against the White Prophet. So did Suen Ghuozi. And Kaan Bloodstone."

He closed his eyes and nodded. "And Kuan, I suppose." He said, neutrally. I sighed.

"Yes. So I think at least. It makes sense, I suppose. For him."

He snorted. He inclined his head, and the hair fell around his face, hiding it behind a curtain. I let it. I did not try to gauge him from our bond. He values his privacy so.

"It is not the first time somebody takes offense at my words. I was waiting for something like that from Kuan."

His voice was carefully neutral. I licked my lips. They were dry. Suddenly, I realized I was thirsty. I looked around and found the exquisite crystal pitcher that is always full of fresh, clean water. I poured a glass for me and drank it in one swallow. Then I took another one. The third, I brought to the Fool. He took it without looking at me, and drank slowly.

I resumed my speaking.

"The Princes that tried to kill you at the Seventh Year Meditation were there for your words on slavery. This is… different. Kuan would do anything to stay on the throne." Again, I hesitated. "I had not seen this attempt at you, though I sensed the other. Did you?"

The question seemed to startle him. Some drops of water spilled from the fine glassware, darkening the clear wood of the desk where they fell. He looked at me with huge eyes. I blinked. It was not a difficult question, wasn't it? Then he smiled and laughed, a puff of a laugh, and shook his head.

"No. No, I haven't. But then again, I have but recently reacquired my… ability." It was his time to hesitate. "And it is never very… reliable in any case." I watched him, noticing his stooped shoulder and his hidden features.

"It is Regal, all over again." My words escaped from me. He startled and looked at me, surprised. I elaborated slowly. "This is built from her arrogance and cruelty. Hatred was the legacy she had had bequeathed to Clerres. And not only to Clerres. As Regal had sowed hate in the Six Duchies," I added softly,but didn’t finish the sentence. I did not say who she was. He knew very well. He nodded slowly and sighed.

I reached with my hand, touching his cheek slowly. His skin was cool and smooth against my fingers. He leaned into my touch a little. "Well, tomorrow I'll tell Vien. We will inform the spies. We already have some names. Suen Ghuozi went to Lụcngọc. I suspect that Khiem stays so much on the border for that very reason. That is the first place where we will have to watch." At the name of the Little Lady‘s palace, he sighed.

"I'll see what I can do, as well. Though my network in Liantharin is not as good as I wish it was."

I nodded again, then frowned.

"They may search for the White Prophet. It would be wiser if you… kept being Auburn, for a while."

 He breathed in, shrugged and nodded.

"The White Prophet is on the road, as far as anyone knows. They won't find him." A wry smile twisted his lips. Then he looked out of the window. His voice was quiet when he went on. "And it is not just her fault, Fitz. The whole… This way of Clerres. It is wrong. It was not so when it began, perhaps, but it is now. I know it is wrong. I see it is wrong. I see its need to change. And yet I know not how to change it."

 I watched him, enthralled. In my travel with the Future's Pride I had once seen a dam. It was a powerful thing, made to keep the very ocean at bay. I remember walking upon it, the sea but a mere ten feet at my left and fields several more feet as the stone drops at my right. I had wondered then what would happen if only a fissure would have marred the dam. Watching my friend speaking was like watching a dam's break. The words flooded outside him.

"I knew so when I came here, with Prilkop. And I tried to change them, Fitz, I really did. But I never could. Prilkop claimed that had I spoke something different than ancient Whites, people would doubt the infallibility of the White. And it is right, and they should. We aren't infallible, Fitz. How I know it. And I still wonder, how could I… But I couldn't. I…" His voice drifted off. It was the second time I had ever heard the Fool come close to babbling.I tried to look into his eyes, puzzled. He averted his own.

There had been a time, more than thirty years before, when I looked into the eyes of a Piebald boy and found my own tortured past as I was about to become the torturer. I had thought then that the tortures I had suffered in Regal's dungeon had forever locked me in the role of the victim. Somewhere, I thought, I would be forever cowered. I believed I was endlessly unmanned by what had been done to me. Back then, it had been intolerable that anyone should know that. Even my Fool. Perhaps especially him.

With a jolt, I realized once more how something I had thought fixed in myself had been flushed away by the currents of Time. I was not the man I would have been without Regal's or Galen's tortures. But I no more thought of the results of those as cowardice.

My Keppet too had been tortured, scores of years before. And I saw, if not most of the tortures, at least the result of them.Had this made him less determined in his quest to change Clerres than he used to be in the time of our youth? Did he think himself despite all the years, the beaten, bloodied creature that still huddled within that icy castle, begging for respite? Worse yet, did he believe I thought so as well? I did not. There is no man I have ever met who was braver or stronger than my foolish Keppet.

But, as the Iduyan's say, you can't make the path of another. As much as it pained me, this road was his and his alone to travel.

I put my finger over his lips. They were soft against my skin. He stilled.

I grinned. "You did not bring your Changer with you." He blinked. I felt my face still. My voice was quiet when I spoke. "I would have come. Back then." My eyes bored into his. He sighed and nodded. I took away my finger.

"I know. I could not allow that. I would not allow that."

I nodded. "I had some good years. Borrowed time, I guess." My lips twitched. It was too sour to be a smile, and too knowing to be a grimace. "Well, what has been has been." I stood up. I shook my head. I was still tired, and in the morn I would have to be witty and charming and royal. None of those things come naturally to me.

Beloved rose from his chair. "Come here. I'll change your bandages. We can do nothing before we have more information." Something in his eyes told me he was not talking only about Kuan. I recalled our stunted conversation about Dhil'a and groaned. He smiled, amused. Something warm bloomed in my chest. If my actions in the White's Ruin had given him back his purpose, then it had been worth it. Perhaps it would help him forgive himself. I nodded and let him drag me toward the bed.

Half an hour later, as we lay down to sleep, my bandages and our clothes changed, a sudden though stuck me. I held his body close to mine and smiled into his hair. Now I knew how I could teach him what he needed to know about the Ieldřyr.

He could learn it as I did. Or, I amended as sleep claimed me, almost as I did.

 


	2. Ruby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last true part of Colour of Roses! It won't be as long as Blue, but it will be longish. Things are wrapping up :D
> 
> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> I almost have a better map of Clerress ready! ^__^ I'll give to you all soon :D

 

 

 

**Chapter Two: Ruby **

 

_When Sendàr choose a barbarian as his King Brother, he made a choice unlike anything that had ever done before._

_True, it was not the first time a King of Vietmar, without suitable brothers or cousins, chose a King of another country as brother. The choice of King Tha Ba Huynh to have as King Brother Xiong, son of the Shining Empress Chu-Hua 600 years ago, is considered today as particularly propitious. But never before it had been somebody out of Clerres. Never before a Barbarian. And King Xanhà Doi Chihn was indeed a Barbarian. Never could he be confused for a native of Clerres. He is by far too burly and hirsute to look like one of us._

_Many lay the blame of such an outrageous choice not on young King Sendàr, but on his Huan, Dihn._

_Rumour had it that the relationship between King Sendàr and his Huan had become strained since the death of both his Father and his older Brother in the  plague when Sendàr was a lad of fifteen, and the Heir-King of Vietmar. But none can rule before their seventeenth year and brotherless, and as such, as custom in all of Clerres dictates, Dihn had been the ruler of the land. By incredible chance, there were no possible King-Brothers in the most suitable royal families of Clerres. Kuan, the Pretender of Liantharin, was not a candidate. Stronglord Arjun of Thantres had only two daughters. High Lord Sensari of Dhevron had only one son, and he was unlikely to offer his lone offspring as a KingBrother for Sendàr. Among the warring city-states of Atremandia and among the noble of Behit somebody may be found, but when the young Sendàr, not yet King even if of age, proposed any of them to Dihn, the Huan managed to dissuade him, citing various reasons, all of them sound and good. But still, Sendàr came  to his twenty-third year of life and was still only Heir-King. Had Dihn allowed for another prince of Clerres to be chosen, perhaps Sendàr would not have taken the matter into his own hands._

_As things stand, he choose a Barbarian, of royal blood and with the strange magic of his homeland. As he hadn't done with the other possible candidates, he singlehandedly adopted Xanhà Doi Chihn as his Brother. It was not unheard of, and the law allowed it, but it was indeed a rare thing to happen, for a lone heir to adopt a Brother without his Huan's knowledge. By the law, in the very moment he claimed Chihn  as his brother, he became King, since he was of age, and Dihn had no more power over him._

_It is said that in the Great Trainer Hall they tell the story of Dihn as a warning. They believe that the older Huan had thirsted for the power of his liege, and this is a most grievous transgressionfor a Huan. I can't vouch this as a truth. I may well be so, but it may just as well be that he didn't want his liege to face a situation for which he was unsuited. It has been said already and often enough how little King Sendàr was fitted for the dire situation Vietmar was in, whilst Dihn had managed it well enough by himself, if with the help of Xanhà Doi Chihn in the acceptable role of Commander of the Border Patrol._

_Had he waited and let Dihn rule, Vietmar would not have to face the shame of having a Barbarian King, a Daman Vua._

"The Daman Vua: Secret Notes"

by Goi Ba Zui

Scribe of Cong ThiaThaDhuig

 

The next day, as I was used to, I woke alone. I moved, without waking. A nagging feeling stirred in the back of my mind. I blinked, still mostly asleep, and opened my eyes. The day had begun, but not  long ago, I reckoned. The sky was still more gray than blue, and the sounds of life had not yet begun. There would be no construction till the Lords of the East and the West had left, that much even my foggy mind remembered. I sat, up and rubbed my face, looking around to see what had wakened me. I glanced at the bed. The Fool was gone, of course. He always was one for little sleep.

_Welcome back, oh sloth mine._

I almost jumped out of the bed. I turned my head so fast my hair whipped my unblinking eyes, stinging me. Yet I could not see her. I quested wildly out, searching…

_Here here. I am coming. Kindly make yourself useful and open the door._

This time, I did jump. Barefoot, I ran toward the door of my quarters and threw it wide.

Snowcloud jumped at me, her mind like a dazzling rainbow. A strong feeling of welcome and love flooded me. I kneeled and buried my face into her fur, breathing her scent in. I rested my brow against the back of her neck and draped a careful arm over her. Her fur stuck to my skin. The World faded and became insignificant as I opened myself to her. I sank my consciousnessuntil I found the warmth and humor of her soul.

I do not know how long I crouched like that. Time had no meaning. But in the end I lifted my eyes and met hers. She yelped and pounced at me. I fell on the floor, laughing, while she bathed my face with her raspy tongue, her tail wagging. We tumbled and tussled in the room, hitting chairs and tables and the closet. Delicate, porcelain washbasins rattled. An exquisite screen came crashing down.

Vien came in a hurry. I recall him looking down on us, a bemused expression on his well schooled face, his hands in his long sleeves, trying not to smile at the sight of his liege sprawled on the floor with 160 pounds of wolf-dog pining him to the floor. I smiled back and dislodged Snowcloud.

She sat and scratched her low-tipped ear.

_It is good to be back, brother mine. I really need a bath!_

I looked at her more closely, noticing the dirt on her white coat, her legs so encrusted with mud that they looked more brown than white. She had lost weight, too. I frowned.

_Are you…_

She yawned hugely.

_I am well. Just tired and dirty. Now… bath?_ She wagged her tail and whined hopefully.

I snorted. I turned toward Vien. He was regarding Snowcloud with a peculiar, guarded expression. My Huan had never really understood Snowcloud, nor the bond that ties me to her. In his gaze there was none of the contempt that I was used to seeing in the eyes of Six Duchies' people, but neither there was an easy acceptance. Rather, my Wit and Snowcloud seemed to make him thoughtful.

"Vien, ask for a bath for Snowcloud." I frowned again. Gao had already relocated to the Great Trainer Hall, where he would live for several years. It would be my duty to Snowcloud to bathe her. But I would have to be present in the days celebration, whatever those may be, and I doubted I would have time for both. I groaned.

Vien nodded.

"Yes, my liege. Queen Chundra has told me that she wishes to depart for Dushanbe in the morn." I looked incredulously at Vien. It was very, very soon. Normally, there would have been at least five days of rituals, celebrations, banquets, and the whole chaos that being noble inflicts upon you. This time, Vien did not succeed in hiding his smile.

"Apparently the Queen wishes to start the travel before the… morning trouble becomes unbearable." I blinked. Of course. Chundra suffered terribly from seasickness, and had suffered before the birth of Chien as well. I nodded.

"I suppose the Lords will use this as an excuse to take their leave, as well." Vien nodded, frowning a little. Then he very carefully straightened the screen and shot an almost reproachful look at me and Snowcloud. I cringed.

_I feel like I have been scolded, sister. By my Huan._

Snowcloud had been scratching herself heartily the whole time, scattering fragments of dried mud and sand around all the room.

_I know not about what you are talking about. But I am glad that the other packs will be back in their own hunting grounds, brother mine._

I smiled and scratched behind her ears. She whined and pressed her wet pink nose in my thigh.

_And the Scentless One can bathe me a lot better than you can._

I groaned, then laughed.

_And who says he will desire to do so, sister?_

_I say so. It is no trouble, Fitz. And it will give Auburn a good reason to be in the King's Quarter._

It was not Snowcloud's voice.  Nor was it mine. It was a voice like scattered lights and clear pure water, like gold gleaming and joy and a flight of jeweled dragons across a pure blue sky. It filled me, like sunlight fills a room. His words threw me off balance. I blinked and looked in front of me stupidly. Snowcloud howled her laughter.

_Scentless One, you should see the Changer right now!_

A sparkle of laughter shimmered between us.

_I can image it well. I am coming._

His distancing from the bond was like a cloud covering the sun. I blinked once more and shook my head. He was indeed learning.

The door opened and a stream of servants moved in and out of the room, bringing buckets of hot water and a repast of steamed chicken, stewed roe deer meat, steamed rolls shaped in bamboo knots and small buns, all arranged in pleasant patterns over silver dishes. They all moved with such precision that they reminded me of a troop of jugglers as they swept in as a wave and then likewise receded from the room. When they had vanished out of the door once more, I shut it firmly behind them. The hot water in the tub filled the room with the aroma of bathing herbs. Snowcloud sniffed it appreciatively and crouched. I hastily retreated behind the screen, but not soon enough. My wolf-dog jumped in the water, causing spurts of water and soap to land everywhere, including on my person. I let out an exclamation. Snowcloud's soapy head emerged from the bath, bubbles streaming behind her head and lolled her tongue at me. I glared. She barked at me, undaunted as usual.

_You need to change anyway, brother mine._

Vien stepped out from the screen where he had the time to take refuge. I glared at his pristine appearance.

He inclined his dark head, his headdress dangling at the side of his delicate face.

"I'll prepare your ensemble, my lord."

I groaned again. Vien disappeared into my wardrobe. I could discern a hint of a smile on his face. I glanced at Snowcloud. She was completely submerged, only her nose above the water. I smiled again and moved as silently as I could toward the bathtub.

_Don't ever think of it, brother mine._

"She is too smart for you, Fitzy-Fitz."

I turned my head, and smiled. He was always able to surprise me. Auburn lifted an eyebrow at me. She was dressed in a simple garb, with a long, orange-brown overdress in silk and golden underdress. Long boots of cream coloured leather reached her knees, and a wide belt with wooden round ornament the size of a small dish emphasized her waist. Her head-dress had the same colours, and dangling ornaments, wooden beads, accentuated his lean, narrow face. Her arms were bare, and several bracelets tingled over them.

I smiled.

"I fear so. You will spoil the clothes." I added, while he, adroit as ever, took away the big pins that kept the head-dress in its place. I have never been able to abide them. It was one of my first fights with Vien, one that I won.

"I know, but I wanted to come directly here. Well met, Snowcloud." He went to the bath. Snowcloud had resurfaced and she lolled her tongue at him. Auburn extended his hand and touched her between her ears. His eyes widened. I looked away, aware that they were sharing some kind of communication that cut me out. I suddenly found myself in a surly mood. That Snowcloud had her own life, aside from me, I knew well, and I have never presumed to be privy of all the Fool's secrets. Yet that they would share something and kept me from it stung.

I left them together, and retreated to the bedroom. Vien was there, laying my clothes for the day on the bed. I sighed at seeing them. As I feared, they were heavily decorated: a black doublet with ivory embroideries, and ivory trouser with black hems. I rubbed my chin and accepted my Huan's help with my ablutions. Vien seemed to have accepted my tastes in clothes as far as the colours were concerned, at least. Still, I was in a churlish mood. I sought for some justification to cling to that stupidity. There was none. Nevertheless, sometimes knowing one has no right to be hurt does not disperse all the anger.I could hear the Fool scrubbing Snowcloud, and his musical voice intersected with laughter. Vien did not speak as he shaved me. As he helped with the underclothes though, he met my eyes. He is almost as tall as I am, very tall for a Liantharinan though this is by no means rare in a Huan.

"There is going to be a formal reception this afternoon, my liege. It will last till evening." I sighed and closed my eyes. That was much of what I expected. I nodded, resigned.

"There will be a shadow puppet play." I smiled. "A new one, made by the Artists of the Artists Quarter in your honor. It depicts the Battle of Thang Long." My smile faded.

I enjoy shadow puppetry. It is in many ways a good illustration of my life in Clerres. Puppetry is an art in the Six Duchies, with the same use that elsewhere theatre has. I can't understand theatres. The first time I saw a play it more befuddled than amused me. I could not adjust to people playing different roles. Shadow puppetry is both more and less alike what I was used to in my childhood and youth: the puppets are without depth, cut in leather and cunningly projected over a screen. So alike, and so different from what I was used to in my old life.

I do not enjoy plays about my feats, such as they are. But there was little that I could do about that, save to bear it in good grace, or the Lords would think something was amiss. Thinking of them brought back my musing about conspiracies. I sighed.

"Vien, do you know to which province Sendàr went last year?"

My Huan raised his head sharply, as he was kneeling to ensure my robe fell just so. His eyes widened for a fraction, but he answered readily enough. "He went to the Tma Province. This year, it would have been the Vei Province's time." I nodded again, looking thoughtful. I was relieved. I needed to be in the Vei Province, for there was Lụcngọc, the birthplace of the Little Lady Quy. The place where the conspirators met. I knew some of their names. Tre'Kato. Suen Ghozi. Khaan Bloodstone. But I needed many more, and proof besides, to tie all of this together.

"I shall make the visit, Vien. I'll inform the Lords after the play." My Huan gazed at me, and nodded slowly. Something not unlike relief passed through our bond. I blinked. He averted his gaze, a faint blush creeping up his cheek. Vien prides himself in his control of the Skill. I feel him by our bond but seldom.

"I was… Preoccupied about next year's inspection of the channels, my liege." Vien's wording was as careful as usual. He finished the last adjustments on my waist and stood up gracefully. I nodded again and sighed. "I shall be the Daman Vua. You need not to remind me of it."

My Huan nodded and straightened his shoulders. He pursued his lips. I met his eyes. Waitan is a new country in an old land. Unknown Houses have risen to prominence, and the Khams were a novelty for all. As such, my status as the Barbarian King was not as evident there. Dushanbe is a dock, and in the recent years the influx of barbarian goods had changed it in many ways. The whole of it makes a Barbarian King not so strange a thing. Not so in the rest of Vietmar. I have already had proof of the Lords dislike of me. And the Vei province, who has suffered more from the war, and reaped less benefits from the increase trade with the Away Kingdoms, had a grimmer view of me than the Tma province. The fact I had saved them from the Iduyans did little to endear me to them. Few things rattle a man more than being indebted to one he thinks inferior.

Vien finished the last touch on my clothes as I fretted. As usual, he ignored me.

The sounds of scrubbing and splashing from the other room abated. Vien went there first, to survey the situation of the floor, lest it would mar my boots I suppose. I followed him. My Huan needn't to have bothered. The room was pristine. My Fool had donned a flowing cassock that I recognized as mine. The garment was too wide for his slender frame, but he had tied the sash expertly around his slim waist and the overall effect was of grace and refinement, even whilst he was busy toweling a much cleaner Snowcloud. She barked at me and wagged her tail proudly, stretching her neck to allow for a deeper drying of her throat.

I could almost hear them. It was like a gnat humming near my ear, or the itch of something forgotten. Or trying to recall the sweet taste of something from a passing whiff of its fragrance. In spite of everything, I smiled. Vien shifted. I cocked my head to him. He was looking at the Fool, kneeling in front of Snowcloud, smiling and brushing a towel over my wolf-dog coat. Then I blinked, and saw what Vien saw: the White Prophet, kneeling and doing the work of a servant. I could not, could never, see my friend like that. I breathed in, slowly.

"Vien, go forward. I shall join you presently."

Vien nodded and tore his eyes from the sight. He slid away, shutting the door behind him.

"I think you have unnerved my Huan." I informed my friend. He snorted, passing another towel over Snowcloud's flank.

"That is for him to choose to be so, and not for me to change to avoid it." He retorted, with a slight smile at his own turn of words. He turned to me. Abruptly, his smile faded. For a time he simply stared at me, mouth slightly ajar. Then his eyes lit.

"I have to say, I approve of his taste in clothes, though." He drawled, eyeing me. I puffed out a breath.

"Stop that, or somebody will start to…" The voice died in my throat. I crossed the arms over my chest, thoughtfully.

He raised one eyebrow at me, not stopping his drying of Snowcloud. "Somebody will what?" He asked, pawing away at her muzzle.

_Why, somebody may think you are his mate, of course. Which would be true, and so a novel sensation._

I nodded, ignoring Snowcloud's tone. It is a skill I have mastered in the last three decades.

A shadow passed through his eyes, and he dropped his gaze, his head lowering so as to hide his face. This time, my mind was following a different trail. I nodded at Snowcloud.

"Yes. But it may be a good idea, though I would have to tell Chundra first."

The Fool raised his head so sharply I feared he would give himself injury, and looked at me with wide dark eyes in his tawny face. I have rarely managed to surprise the Fool, even if it had happened more in recent times. This was one of those. Still, he recovered well. Before Snowcloud could nose at him too much, he went back at scrubbing her dry.

"I see." He nodded at me. "Yes, it would give me leave to your quarters, and possibly some power in the Court. Though more visibility may mean more people will see the White Prophet in Auburn. It is worth thinking about, though. I doubt not that Chundra would see this as a wise plan, even more so whilst carrying your child. That alone will be proof enough of your continual good relationship." I did not ask of him how he knew Chundra was bearing my child. He had known Kettricken to be pregnant afore all else. He was the White Prophet. As he spoke, he gave me a little, secret smile and straightened up, a mock challenge to ask him how he knew. I smiled back and nodded slowly. Chundra and I had had always had an alliance, unspoken, but not less strong for all of it. We had to, for I was the Daman Vua and she but a foreign Queen. We had to prove we were of one mind, and strong against the Great Lords and the Rulers of the rest of Clerress. A lover may been seen as a chip in such an armour. Still, as the Fool had said, she was carrying my child. That counted for much. I tried not to think about how I was using my son as a political tool even before his birth, and nodded again.

"So it is. I shall tell her today," I promised. I smiled again, and straightened myself up. My bad humor was mostly gone, though the idea of a whole day spent in courtly gallantries was enough to make me dread the day. Then I glanced around. My gaze locked on the hidden door. I hesitated. The garden was not ready, my mind insisted. But yet, it was not likely to be ready unless somebody helped me with it.

I went to the door and opened it. The Fool looked at me, curious as usual. He had finished drying Snowcloud, and she was magnificent, white as the cloud and the snow she is named after. She stretched like dogs and wolves do, her forelegs before her hind legs and yawned hugely, standing on her four feet to come with me. Her blue eyes regarded me with their usual mirth.

_Pray, tell me more on how magnificent I am…_

I ignored her and turned to the Fool. I gestured with a jerk of my head toward the rising path.

"Up there is something for you. You may like it." I told him, gruffly. Then I stalked out, Snowcloud's at my heels and her laughter in my mind.

_You really are such a thoughtful one, brother mine, to dig a den for your mate._

I ignored her, but the thought of a whole day spent enduring the Lords was suddenly much less grim.


	3. Shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last true part of Colour of Roses! It won't be as long as Blue, but it will be longish. Things are wrapping up :D
> 
> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> I have finished Red! :) The last Interlude is tiny, but it doesn't matter much, I'll probably be posting two chapters at week by then...
> 
> NOTE!  
> The song is NOT MINE. It is from the same story where I took the name "Vanyel": Mercedes Lackey "The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy". The original is about Vanyel himself, you can hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cv8jwxgM2Q I have just modified it to make it fit the story. Those are very good books. I highly suggest them : I admit this whole chapter is a bit of an experiment in songfic. I hope you like it :D

 

 

 

** Chapter Three: Shadow **

 

 

 

_Our little charge has  strong vision again, Venerable Hong-De. It is uncanny, to see how the power of Time wracks such a little body. Truly, a sight to behold!_

_Yes, Venerable Hong-De, I have heard that the servants are scared by the screams, but they are simple folk, unworthy of being in the presence of a White, albeit a young and untested one. It is true that the screams would, in a simple human, mean_ _pain and suffering, but our little charge is a White, and it is nothing but the prophecy pouring strongly inside a little body. It is truly amazing to see. We are indeed blessed to be in the same time as a Prophet._

_You say we should try to educate the lesser people, but I swear to you, Venerable Hong-De, that I have tried to explain this to the servants, yet, as I said, they seem unable to understand the basic, intrinsic differences between us, lowly humans, and the more perfect Whites. They appear to hold the silly notion that a little Prophet is naught but a child. I suggest more education is needed in the place whence those servants came, it is obvious they have had some barbarian influence, to be so ignorant of basic White Lore._

_So I would be grateful if you would stop the meddling servants from interfering again. I shall recount the accident as it has happened, and I am as truthful as if I was recording the vision of the Prophet._

_I was in the room where the little Prophet was sleeping, dutifully recording every scream and moan, as we should do. I had been there since the moment the Little Prophet had first gone to sleep, and I was contemplating with awe how strong the power of the prophecy is, to toss and arch the little body so, when a serf came bursting through the door, waking the little Prophet who lost the tray of vision. The accursed serving woman seemed unseemly concerned about what she perceived as "agony" in the White's screams. I rebuked her harshly. I suggest finding somebody else in her place, as she is clearly unfit for the duty._

_The little Prophet was clearly upset to not have completed her vision, and she spent a lot of time talking about the Black Dragon, Son of Ice and Bringer of Darkness. Our Pale Child then became  silent and wistful and started to cry._

_I waited for her comprehensible disquiet to abate, sitting respectfully in the appointed corner in her room She went then back to sleep, after tossing some more in her bed and sobbing for a while. Her commitment to her Path is an example for all of us, humble humans that we are._

_All her words had been dutifully recorded, Venerable Hong-De and you will find them in the adjoined scroll._

_ThirJast-Loyr, White Monk of Behit_

_Letter to the Prior Hong-De_

 

The day went much as I had expected.

I do not care to recount  it. Suffice to say that I exchanged conventional words with nobles who wanted me dead because I made them richer and walked on gardens where winter had never blown. I sat on my throne, Chundra sitting by me, while people dressed in the same garb kneeled in time while incense was being burnt, the strong smell making my eyes water, and I delivered to the population the speech they expected about the strength of Vietmar and our unity. I was to do little but stand stiff, looking noble and haughty. Not too dire a feat, even for me, though a boring one. I was counting the birds in the trees when something resonated in me. I blinked rapidly. I would like to claim a great mastery over myself, but it was not so. I was simply too surprise even to react.

I have once seen a trick done in Liantharin, in my time at the Border, before the Battle of Thang Long. Two bells were put on the same table, when the vendor stroke one, the second started vibrating in turn, untouched. It was and was not magic, and I was left marveling about how such a thing could happen.

This was how the second bell must have felt, if bells had feeling. Something in me vibrated with a sensation I could not name. It was not unpleasant. It was like tasting the colour red, or drinking a tune. Yet no word or similes did it justice, any more than words can explain the smell of fresh bread or the colour yellow. I was too confused to be apprehensive. Snowcloud, close to my seat, stirred and lifted her blue eyes to my face.

_Oh, the Scentless One has found the den you dug for him, brother mine._

I blinked again, my eyes unfocused. Of course. It was our Wit-Bond. The Fool had needed time to open the passage toward the hidden dale. I had not recalled to have hidden it, but even had I done so, I would hardly have needed to open it for him. I know how well he likes a riddle. I relaxed on the throne. The feelings were fey, as odd and eerie as my Keppet himself, but I knew it was pleasure and joy, in the same way that a shade of blue is blue, even if you have never seen that hue before. I almost smiled. He had liked my gift. My shoulders unknot.

When it was time to stand up I reeked of the too-strong incense, enough to make my head ache. I glanced longingly at the simpler feast of the population, beyond the walls, where whole pigs were roasted and peddlers of noodle soup, both salty and sweet, started their businesses  while bands played their vivacious tunes. We had supplied the money to Great Trainer Citymaster Atid for the festivities, a way to take people's minds away from Shamans and Demons.

The whole morning, and the first part of the afternoon, passed thusly. I sighed to myself, reaching out for the comfort of Snowcloud, only to find her pleasantly asleep in the kitchen, her belly full of good food. I couldn't help but smile. Then I straightened and went on with the rituals, turning to the Lords of the East and the West and retired for the shadow-puppet show.

The play would be held inside. I usually enjoy shadow puppet plays. I knew I wouldn't enjoy it this time. I resigned myself in pretending a pleasure I didn't feel and went to sit in my place, the best in the room, in front of the stage. Several other seats were set in the room, for the Garden Palace has a room dedicated exclusively to shadow puppetry, a lavishness I would not have believed possible before my time in Clerres. The stage itself was elaborately carved from perfumed woods and inlaid with amber from the Amber Mines. The screen was of the best silk, delicate as a web. The windows were covered with artfully posed screens that cut light without making the room stuffy or dangerously dark.

Once everybody was seated, the lamp that would project the shadow was lit and the voices shushed. An image, delicate as lace, appeared over the screen. Several shadows of people, bent under their burdens, like exquisite figures cut in paper. Two mountains, the trees carefully carved. And then a voice started singing.

Along a road in Vietmar, at the place called Thang Long

A fearful band of refugees flees the Iduyans' war.

A frightened band of refugees, their children, and their wives,

Seek refuge from the creatures, who want more than just their lives.

I closed my eyes. I had little desire to remember it. Yet something in the carving of the shadow puppets was achingly familiar. I opened my eyes again.

Now up rides King Chihn. 'Why then such haste?' says he.

'Now who is it pursuing, whose anger do you flee?

You are all of Liantharin, why seek you Vietmar?

Is Kuan no protection? Or does hr bideall his men too far?'

 

'Oh, Chihn, King Chihn, we flee now for our lives,

The Shamans would enslave us, our children and our wives-

They'd give our souls to Demons, our bodies to their men.

King Kuan has not heeded, or he happens not to ken.'

As the song played on, a figure adroitly carved was moved into the screen. It was a warrior over a horse, with an axe on its back. I ignored the song. I knew it already, including its imprecision. I was not as yet King when the Battle of Thang Long had raged. But artists, I have learnt, sometimes play with the truth even more than historians do. The more I watched the carvings, the more I recognized the hand behind them. A smile played over my lips. Now I knew what Auburn had worked on in the Artists Quarter. It was the first time I heard a song on my supposed deeds, either as FitzChivalry or as King Chihn, without gritting my teeth.

In the end, I had to admit that I enjoyed the Puppet Show more than I had expected.

It was twilight by the time the show finished. I rose first, with my right hand clasping Chundra's slightly. All the faces in the room were riveted on us. I took a deep breath. Luckily, the duty to carry the message would not be mine. My task was to see the reaction in the room.

Vien took a step forward, his hands in his ample sleeves. Everybody stilled. All knew what that meant. Vien, consummated politician that he is, waited several seconds before speaking in his smooth, fine voice.

"King Xanhà Doi Chihn, cCalledDemonsbane, shall visit the Vei Province once the Monsoon has gone. May House Thrin be honoured by his presence."

The Great Lords themselves were too savvy in politic to demonstrate their thoughts. As I had suspected, they had been expecting such a possibility. They both bowed and Trinh Lai Xuanoffered the ritual, flowery words of welcome. But as I looked out over the faces turned up to me, their King, I had time to read on them every emotion known to mankind. Some women simpered while others appeared to sneer. Some young men struck poses that displayed their clothes; others, dressed more simply, straightened as if to be on guard. I read envy and love, disdain, fear, and on a few faces, hatred.

One of those attracted my gaze. Thrin Van Vuong, son of the Great Lords of the Vei Province. I averted my eyes. His father may very well be too wise to show his distaste for the Daman Vua, but his son's expression had likely shown what his whole House thought.

They would be gone by the first light of the morrow. I yearned for my Waitan as it was, clean of their intrigues and presences. I sat again with Chundra, and spent far too many hours exchanging greetings to all who were important enough to deserve such an acknowledgment from us. Lastly, we saluted the Great Lords, who bowed to us. Thrin Van Vuong had schooled his features into a mask of politeness. Had I not seen his contempt not long ago, I would have not believed it, myself.

The sun had sunk beyond the horizon, and the last sunrays were retreating in front of the night's onslaught when the doors of the theatre closed behind the last person in the Lords' retinue. I waited for the sound to stop echoing in the empty room. I collapsed, groaning.

Chundra laughed, a bubbling sound. I opened my eyes a slit and regarded her reproachfully.

She grinned back, twisting a strand of hair around her tapered fingers.

"For one who can fight demons without flinching, those gatherings seem to take a lot of you." She said, in jest. I sighed again and rubbed my eyes.

"They do. I detest it all."

She nodded back at me, thoughtfully. "You will see a lot more of it in your visit, Chihn."

I sighed and closed my eyes again, but I nodded. Vien appeared at my elbow. The room was growing steadily darker, as no servant had  come to light the lamps. The colours were muted, more subdued. The sounds of the World further away. I cherished the silence, and the darkness.

Chundra waited, silently looking at me. I wondered if she knew I was about to tell her something. I shifted my weight in the richly embroidered cushions and took a deep breath.

"The White Prophet will come with me in the visit." I could almost hear Chundra's gasp, but not quite. She, too, is well trained in the masks of politics. I debated with myself if I had the right to tell her of my friend's latest persona. But how could I explain it otherwise? And the people of Clerres were used to the White Prophets doing as they pleased. Too used, perhaps. "He will come as… as a woman. As an Artist, Auburn.Nobody will have to know who he is, or that he is with me."

It was too dark to see Chundra now. The silence stretching between us was as peaceful to the ears as it was troubling to the mind.

"Auburn will need…" I fumbled, and my voice died in the darkness.

Chundra chuckled at my lost bearing.

"The White Prophet will need a reason to be with you. I see. And what were you thinking about?"

Her teasing tone stopped me mute. It was almost pitch dark now, but it was a pleasant darkness. I licked my dry lips. She knew, of course. I couldn’t tell if she was truly as indifferent to the suggestion as she appeared, with the darkness helping her to hide from me.

I took a deep breath.

"It would be useful if there would be voices that Auburn is my lover." I bit my lip. Chundra was my wife, in name and at least in part in fact. What was more, she was carrying my child. My child. I had had so little time to think about it. I dismissed the thought then, too. It was not the time for it now either.

"But if you think it would be… dishonorable for you, we shall find another way."

For a second there was no sound in the room. I wonder if I had given her insult, and was about to speak when I heard her rising to her feet.

"Dishonorable? No, Chihn. Helping the White Prophet is never dishonorable. And soon Vietmar will know there is going to be a second prince. I know it is going to be a boy." I could hear a smile in her voice. "Though I rather hoped for a girl."

She left, silent in the darkness as the servants came scurrying in with the lamps, bowing deeply to her. I watched her go, and wondered once more about Clerres and the White Prophets.

Vien cleared his throat. I breathed out and stood up. It was time to go back to my room.

 

As I expected, Vien had ordered for food to be left in my public study. I looked at the golden plates artistically placed over the lacquered table. Stewed chicken and braised meat-balls of three delicacies, omelet with scallion, soup of shredded chicken and bird’s nest, steamed dumplings with the dough open at the top filled with minced chicken and mushrooms. I sighed. I had not eaten at the several tables that were strewn in the whole castle. I had not been hungry. Neither was I then. I took a dumpling and thought of Fizek. Sometimes, I wished my boy had the Skill.

Snowcloud was resting in front of the fireplace, her mind deep in sleep. Her legs twitched in her dreams. I drifted into her mind and shared her dim dreams of an endless chase, pursuing a quarry I never saw, but whose hot scent dragged me onward through nettle, bramble, and scree. I smiled and retreated. She had come to me as soon as she could have, and was tired and more than tired. I let her rest and sat at the table, eating the bun without tasting it. Vien looked at me in silence. The room was cozy in its own way, the lamplight lending a mellow quality to the carving and amber inlays. I relaxed on the chair.

"Chyne Skilled to me, my liege.During the play." I sighed again.

"I would have liked it had she Skilled to me." Her preference for Vien stung, but my Huan shrugged gracefully.

"I think she perceived you were… otherwise occupied. She told me she and Bitter Moon will arrive within three days at most."

I nodded. Three days. The worst monsoon would be over in another half moon, perhaps less. Then it would be time to go to the Vei province. I groaned. I watched the play of the fire in the hearthearth and took another bite.

"Vien, alert the spies. I want all the information you can find about the House of the Little Lady Quy, her fathers and the meeting that had been done there with Tre'Kato." My Huan glanced at me, then nodded. He bowed and left. I looked at the fire. Once Chyne was back, we would have to use the Skill on the Little Lady Quy. We needed whatever knowledge she had, but I had no desire to hurt or harm the child. With Chyne's help we could likely learn much more without creating pain. I sighed. I was not looking forward to it.

I closed my eyes. The warmth and the release of tension were pleasant, as it was the soft sound of the rain. I welcomed it. The Rainy Season meant I didn't as yet have to leave Waitan. My hand, still with the half-eaten dumpling on it, came to rest on the armband. My head lolled to the side. It was so very good.

Somebody draping a coverlet around me made me blink sleepily. My eyes met two dark ones. I blinked again and stood up in my seat.

"How long…" I asked, stupidly. The Fool grinned. The rain was still falling. Snowcloud was still asleep in front of the fire. I shook my head to clear it. I stood up, looking regretfully at the food still on the table and took another bite of the bun. Still warm.

"Not long." He paused. His sleek hair was wet. The water made it shine even more in the soft light. He had scrubbed his face, and something akin wonder suffused his features. He had changed into one of my garment, a flowing cassock that came to his knees. The garment was too wide for his slender frame, but he had tied the sash expertly around his slim waist. He had sacked my wardrobe and donned a pair of my yellow leggings. They were too wide for him, but served well as trousers. With the light red coloured cassock and his own tanned complexion, the overall effect was of warmth without flame, not unlike a sunset after a pleasant day. I smiled at him.

"The Great Lords will depart tomorrow. Chundra has agreed with our plan." I informed him. He nodded and snatched a plate of stewed chicken. He sat in the other chair and wiggled a chopstick at me.

"She is a shrewd queen." I nodded back and took another dumpling.

"Yes. I saw your shadow puppets today. They were the most beautiful I had ever seen."

He averted his gaze, but not before I could see his coffee-coloured eyes glowing like a cat's before a fire with pride. He smiled at me almost coyly. I leaned my shoulder over the fireplace and smiled back. He lowered the exquisite bowl on the table and stood up once more. His face grew serious. He made two steps towards me, graceful and lithe as a dancer and threw his arms around my neck.

"Thank you. For… Is it truly for me?" His delighted, almost childlike tone was repayment enough for the work I had put in the hidden garden. I smiled in his hair and nodded, felling the tension of the day ebb out of me like the tide ebbs out of the harbor. He felt good in my arms, his body strong and fine at once.

"I know you like to have a place for yourself. I was not able to finish the cabin alone, however."

He shrugged in my arms, like a ripple in a pond.

"We can do it together." I nodded. Then I hesitated for a second and extricated myself from his embrace. He went back to the balls of his feet and looked at me questioningly. I breathed in, deeply.

"I have… something else for you." He looked at me with his usual curiosity, but waited.

I went into my bedroom. The bed, a massive thing of yellow wood, carved in pleasing spirals and relaxing shapes stood in the middle of it, the mattress tall over it and inviting sleep. But sleep was not what I desired then. I kneeled by the bed and let my finger follow the outline of a carving. My finger felt what my eyes couldn't discern. I pressed down. With a click, the secret compartment opened in front of me. I took out the small box reverently. As I rose to my feet I saw the shadow of my Keppet. He was peering over my shoulders with an intense curiosity in his open dark gaze. I took a deep breath and went back to the study.

Something in my bearing must have warned him, for he did not try to speak. His own face was serious. I felt oddly self conscious as I handed him the box. He took it and looked at me, questioningly. Then he opened it. I knew, of course, what there was inside: several scrolls in my own pen, mostly words, but even small images, as good as I could make them, and symbols explained as it went. It was not a neat account, but then it had been meant for no eyes but mine. Still, he had as much right to it then I myself had.

He frowned and watched the first page. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, again.

"It is a recount of the Vision. The one I talked to you about. About Vanyel, and Flint, and the Ancient Whites." He blinked at me and looked down again with the keen interest I remembered so well from our younger days. He pursed his lips and shook his head, slowly.

"You wrote it down?" He told me, incredulous. I nodded.

"You told me that no hand is so clear as the one that belongs to the eye that has seen.” I quoted his words, told me a lifetime and half a World away. "I thought… that it was proper. You are the first one I give it to. It is only half of it. The other half is in Fisil." I added. I rubbed my arm and jerked my head to the side. It was ridiculous. Why should I be wary of showing this to him?

He laughed, a puff of a laugh. I had thought he would start immediately on it, but first he looked at me and smiled. He put his hand on my check. His touch was as cool as it had always been.

"Thank you." His tone was grave, his expression solemn. Abruptly, I knew he understood my reticence, and why I hadn't told him before.

I nodded and sat down with a sigh, serving myself to a helping of lukewarm soup as the Fool took the first page and started reading.

" _The child looks at the great megaloceros, kneeling in the high grasses. There are six adults: a stag and five does, and four fawns, grazing in the tall, hard grass of the immense prairie. The big animals enjoy their meal, partly sheltered from the merciless cold wind by a small hill nearby._

_All his senses are keen. His eyes, a dark shade of blue-grey not unlike flint, fix on the massive deer, noticing every shift of the big muscles under the fur. His small, slightly freckled nose is twitching in the air, smelling their scent and the rain soon to come. His ears, partially covered by straw-colored hair, notice every change in the cold wind. His outer sense vibrates and shifts, showing him all the creatures around him. He is not afraid. There  are no big meat-eater in the proximity…"_

I looked at him, perched on the chair, his knees up to his chin. Then my eyes passed over Snowcloud, sleeping with her muzzle over her paws. In spite of all that was still unknown, in spite of treacherous Lords and traitors and conspirators, in spite of a land where I would always be a stranger, I found myself smiling.

 


	4. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last true part of Colour of Roses! It won't be as long as Blue, but it will be longish. Things are wrapping up :D
> 
> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> I am sorry this chapter is so tiny :( I shall post the next one by the middle of the week instead than by the end this time :)
> 
> First chapter of the next part written!

** Interlude **

 

 

 

_The grasses bloom, fresh and tall in the Spring morning._

_The last snow has melted, but in the first, awkward bud of Spring the beasts of the sky and the earth have not as yet fattened. The prairie flowers, as do the trees in the city, competing with the clouds in the Sky. But the time of nourishing leaves and grasses is yet to come, as is the time of fat calves. Life is still struggling in the last, desperate flailing before Warmth and Spring take hold._

_The city bleeds._

_The road sprawls like a stone snake between the hills and towards the city. People walk, following the serpent's coils outside the city. People of white mien and colourful garb, with petite bodies and graceful movements. They walk slowly, encumbered by what they will need in terms of clothes and tools for the next twenty years, some talking with each other in the melodious tongue that Vanyel taught Flint, so long ago. There aren't many of them, perhaps numbered in the tens, but Spring has just begun. More will leave._

_The_ _Ieldřyr walking on the street know of this. Know before it  happens, the faces of the ones who won't be there in the next meeting of life. They part wailing from friends that won't be seen any more, and salute with joy the ones they know will meet again._

_Flint watches them leave the city, from above. Perched atop one of the towers-house, by the city's gates, where the magic begins and the wild gives way to the charm that the place is. He spies on them, those lithe, colourless beings that are and are not like his Dhil'a. That are and are not like him. His gray-blue eyes follow them, one by one by one. His scarred face gives away little of his thoughts, but his brows are furrowed slightly._

_Flint's body shocksshakes, like a cat shrugging away water and leapt down with care. By body he is still a young man, as young as he was more than twenty years ago. He leaps with more grace than his birth-people, with their stocky forms, could ever reach. He is lithe and strong, his muscles and sinews having lost none of the suppleness of youth. But his grey-blue eyes, by whose colour he is named, are shadowed like a clouded sky, and ancient besides. He is dressed in a gray tunic, embroidered in blue, and blue trousers, the clothes of the same style of the people under him. He is still barefoot._

_He enters a window, walking swiftly in a round room whose walls and floors are alive with colourful mosaics, spirals and wheels and_ _patterns, and the white people in bright garbs. He doesn't look at them with wide-eyes anymore, but moves without a thought to the door. He climbs up in the spiral staircase and opens the jewel-encrusted door at the end of them._

_Three pairs of unmoving eyes meet his own, each the colour of a jewel: green eyes, lavender eyes, and grey  eyes look at him. The people with the green  and  lavender eyes have the same colouring of their irises rises: one is as green as the new leaves, in skin and hair, the other resembles a periwinkle. They are sitting in the way of their people, one cross legged, almost boneless, and the other with his knees under his chin. Their unmoving gazes are not unlike the one of a owl, watching a mouse. Nobody speaks._

_Flint doesn't move for a moment, his gaze resting over the second Dhil'a pair, the Dhil'a of another_ _Ieldřyr's City. His features don't move, but his body tenses. Their faces too show nothing of their thoughts, but if their unblinking eyes hold no animosity, neither there is welcome. On both their chests dangle a single stone, as big as the tip of a man's thumb, white with streaks of many shades. Only Flint's chest is bare of jewels._

_Flint walks toward Vanyel, who rises to meet him. The Gray Seer's hand rises to rest over his Dhil'a‘s chest. Vanyel dances behind his Dhil'a‘s back and slides something around his neck. A single gem shines, dangling from a ribbon, encased in a spider net of gold, as big as a man's thumb. The jewel is red in the light of the fading sun._

_The other pair looks and doesn't speak, but their lips are pressed thin. They rise to their feet and look at Vanyel, whose colour is lighter than theirs are. Vanyel stares back, his slim shoulders defiantly raised._

_Then the other couple, without a word, take the same door Flint has used. Their footsteps fade in the dusk._

_Flint collapses in one of the seat, left by them. His eyes are closed, and his body rigid._

_"I can't stand them. It is like… Like my Tribe, all over again."_

_Vanyel brings him a glass of water and the human drinks, gulping it down._

_"Neither can I. But this was to be done, this meeting at the end of the ten years. I can understand why you left. They were by far too rude."_

_Flint smiles faintly at Vanyel bellicose tone. He remembers well his Dhil’a‘s murderous gaze._

_"Thank you."_

_Vanyel shakes his head and his cool fingers caress his Dhil'a‘s scarred face. Flint leans a bit in the touch._

_They stay still as the light recedes its dominion upon the World, and darkness ascends. The lamps and the torches are the only source of light in the room, and their rays  dance between them._

_Then Flint opens his eyes and look at his chest. The jewel at his breast shines, green, in the light of the torches. The man raises his eyes over his Dhil'a. Vanyel is looking out of the windows, over the city, one of the two left._

_"There are going to be only two cities left by the next Cycle."_

_Flint doesn't challenge Vanyel's words. He knows the Seer too well. He swallows._

_"Vanyel. They are not wrong. How can I be your Dhil'a, when I can't foresee? I don't. I am not like you, or your people."_

_The gray man slides forward, his thin, strong arms around_ _Flint's shoulders and his check resting over Flint's fair hair._

_"I tell you the Futures." He squeezes, a little. "And together we will bring your birth Tribe here."_

 


	5. Henna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> This is the second, promised chapter. I have already written this week chapter of the next part and I am on my way to writing the second. I hope to be able to do it, because then CoR will be pratically complete, only one more chapter (an interlude) to finish it! :D

 

 

 

** Chapter Four: Henna **

_When White Beloved came back in Clerres from his time in the Barbarian Kingdoms, he was not alone. He came with a strange man in tow, black as the night is long. This man went by the name of Danguoi. He remains a mystery to this day, both in his influence over White Beloved and in his disappearance._

_In the beginning, Danguoi proved his loyalty and helpfulness to White Beloved. He was instrumental in setting up the White Diet, in which White Beloved ruled on the Liantharin's lack of heir. He proved to be a suave diplomat and a shrewd tactician. Without his and Gombochab's work, it is doubtful the Rulers of Clerres would have agreed to come to White Beloved‘s urging. Indeed, who was this creature, this strange not-white who called himself White Prophet to pretend obedience not due to him? Yet between the Priors influence and Danguoi‘s tireless work, they managed such a feat._

_Undoubtedly, Danguoi was from Clerres, but whence he came remains unknown. His colouring was too extreme to fit well into any of the patterns found in our White Land, and, for all his knowledge of our ways, there was much he didn't know and should have._

_His relationship with White Beloved remained well for several years. The first five years, Danguoi and White Beloved seemed indeed to be in accord. Truly, some of the people who saw them together spoke of the respect that the Prophet showed to the black man as something akin what a student has toward a teacher, a strange and ridiculous notion when applied to a White Prophet, since are they not the teacher of us all?_

_Such a harmony of thought was not destined to last. In his fifth year, during the ritual Pilgrimage to Nintes, White Beloved spoke against slavery. As it is well known, Thantres, Malach, Behit, Kizah and some city-states of Atremandia employ slavery, and commerce in it is florid. His words, though they were not a ban of the custom, were nonetheless strong enough to cause alarm in the countries. Furthermore, in the subsequent years he ordered the release of all slaves that were in the employment of the White Inns in those lands._

_Some slaves began running away on the White Roads, as it was believed that if you were on one, you were free. At first it was but a trickle, and the rulers of the various countries waited, hoping it would pass, or that somebody else would speak first._

_However, when a personal, favourite slave of High Noble Ananz of Behit fleefled to the White Temple, the situation precipitated. White Beloved in person opposed the return of the slave to her owner._  
  
That very year, the Pearl King Tuah issued a request for explanation, asking how the recent words of White Beloved could be interpreted in the light of the words of White Chai, White Thoa and White Myrkar, all of whom spoke in favour of slavery.   
  
It is said that White Beloved attempted to call a White Diet about slavery. If he had indeed done so, who know what the result would have been? But it didn’t happen. Nobody knows how, or why, and this is all rumor and conjecture, but it seems from what the White Monks of Behit say to each other that White Beloved asked to Danguoi to help in calling the Diet, and Danguoi, as helpful as he had been ten years before, now managed to make sure that the Diet would not happen.

_And it did not._

_The Diet was not officially called in time, and it failed._

_No one knows what happened between Danguoi and White Beloved, but six months later he was not anymore in the White Temple, and has not been seen or heard since._

_Speculation about White Beloved,_

_by the personal note of an anonymous Behit Scribe_

 

I did not go to watch the Lords departure,  that afternoon, nor Chundra's, in the morning. Doing so would be against Vietmar's custom. I saluted my wife in private, and she reassured me her pregnancy was going well. Bitter Moon would come with her, as soon as she would be back. When they left, I felt better. This child may not have been conceived out of love, nor the true one I felt when I beget Molly nor the pretended one that in which Dutiful was sired, but it was still my child. I attempted to bid my farewell to Chien, as well. The boy had grown much, gaining perhaps three inches, and his body has lost the last trace line of infancy. I played with him a bit, but he was still wary of me. Yet, he didn't scream or hide his face in his nurse's robe, and so I counted it a victory.

The Garden Palace felt strangely bereft, devoid of Chundra's retinue and the Great Lords presence. I shook my head, and looked out of the Great Hall‘s window, toward the dock. It was a fine day, as only the time during the Rainy Season can be, when the daily downpour set all the dust and the air is clear and crisp. I could see the sails of the two hoys, carrying the Lords to their own province. They looked not unlike clouds, if clouds in the sky could ever part ways as speedily as the two hoys did. I smiled tightly.

"A success, my liege." I sighed and turned. Vien stood behind me, his hands in his sleeves and his dark eyes thoughtful. I nodded back. A success, indeed. But if there was something I had learnt in my all my time spent in conspiracies and politics is that it is a game that never ends, and every move, even a successful one, carries the possibilities of disaster.

"Yes. We shall have to see what the Great Lords shall do to implement the Schooling Law. I have no doubt that they will do all in their power to make it dead writing."

Vien nodded grimly. I started to walk toward my quarters. As I did so, I quested toward Snowcloud. She was still at the wharf, having marched alongside Chien. She was busy prancing her superiority towards the dog-companions of some Human People and enjoying herself tremendously. I left her at that.

As I opened the door to my quarters I smiled, knowing who I would meet inside. I steeped in, followed by Vien.

The Fool had taken charge of my study. The first thing I saw was him, sitting cross-legged like a tailor on my chair before my desk. His elegant clothes had disappeared, replaced by the evening comfort of a robe. The moment I was in the room, he was aware of my presence. He lifted his eyes to mine before I spoke. Over the desk there were several neat stacks of scrolls. Some I recognized as my own writing, the recount of my Vision of Vanyel and Flint, a time long past. Others were unknown to me. I walked closer. He had been trying to copy some of the symbols, and several paragraphs of the story itself were put to paper by its clear hand. He smiled at me.

I nodded curtly.

"It is a good job but this" I pointed at the symbols that, together, made the word Arth, "needs to be narrower."

I took a brush and demonstrated on a sheet of paper where he had already made several attempts at copying runes and letters. He watched me with keen interest, then tried again.

I regarded his efforts critically. A good job, indeed. He had copied runes and symbols in his haphazard fashion. The meaning of them still escaped him.

Vien coughed behind us. I turned. I had been expecting him to make a discreet egress, yet he was still there, his face still as a statue. He caught my eyes with a levelled gaze.

"We have to plan for the visit of the Vei's Province, my liege."

I groaned. Vien's lips twitched.

"He may go in disguise."

We both turned to my friend. The Fool was still sitting on my desk, regarding both of us keenly.

"It happened in our village when I was a child, before I went to Behit." He elaborated. "The King came under disguise. He wanted to be sure of the channels' state, I suspect. And probably to get a glimpse of the little White." He added, with a wry smile. "The people of my village learnt it was the King only after he went away."

I looked at my friend and raised an eyebrow. "You, of course, knew it already."

He wriggled his eyebrows. "Of course." His smile widened at the memory. I decided it was better to avoid questions.

Vien was nodding slowly. "It can be done, my Liege. You would present yourself to Lord Trinh Lai Xuan and Lord Thrin Hai Hu after your inspection instead than before." Vien paused. "It had been a long time since the last time a King went in disguise, but there is neither Law or Custom against it."

I frowned, and yet it made sense. The canals were the lifeblood of Vietmar. What better way for a King to ensure their maintenance than to go and see them unencumbered by a retinue, and by Lords who had every reason to show themselves better than they were? Yet even as I thought so I glanced at my friend. He was still sitting cross-legged on the chair, his hands on the desk. The last ray of the sun tinted the World a warm yellow, and made him an idol of burnished gold. His eyes glinted mischievously as he returned my gaze. I had to smile. I doubted not that this fed his keen love for acting.

"Very well. We shall do so." I paused. "I leave the preparations in your hands." I glanced at both. Vien nodded back at me. "I'll pretend to prepare a retinue." He paused, frowning. His black eyes looked at me from my head to my boots. I knew what he was thinking. I would be recognizable easily everywhere in Vietmar. My eyes, my hair and my height would bring me apart.

"Leave the disguises to me. I think I can manage." My friend's voice jolted me from my musing. I looked at him. I had no doubt that he could. What I feared what how he would achieve my camouflage. He looked back at me with a gleefully innocent expression. I was not sure if he had learnt it from Snowcloud or the other way around. I was not fooled for a moment. I sighed.

"Very well. Tomorrow we will prepare. There is no sense in delaying. They know I shall come, but they won't expect me so soon."

Vien nodded, bowed, and left the room. The click of the door resonated. I went to bar it. Then I sat in the armchair. I looked pointedly at the scrolls, then at my friend. The part of the tale he had finished with Vanyel and Flint coming to the White City. The rest was on Fisil. Yet I had made no attempt to retrieve it. I wondered why. He sighed and gestured at the papers strew upon the desk.

"I envy you this vision. I wish I had it myself." I smiled back, closing my eyes.

"It was not particularly pleasant. I would have given it up to you, if I could."

A heavy silence fell on the room. Ah. Of course. I had given up a vision to him, not long ago. I glanced under my eyelids to him. His head was bent, and his hair strewn in front of it, creating a curtain to hide his face and thought. Twilight had given up to dusk, now. I rose to light the lamps. A servant may have done it, but I had no wish to be interrupted.

"So much of what we know about Whites is wrong. I am not sure about what I think of him." His tone was thoughtful. I turned to face him. He met my gaze and elaborated. "Vanyel. He didn't seem to… care."

I nodded. "He didn't. Save about Flint. It was a… Duty, for him." I paused. "An akhel."

He nodded back. "Akhel, yes. I saw the rune." He took a deep breath, his chest expanding under the cloth. "Fitz… Some parts of this were not written in the Six Duchies' language."

I knew it, of course. I had written them in White. I looked at him with a blank expression. Did he think I did not know it? He sighed.

"You seem to know the language of the White." He clarified. I nodded at that.

"Yes. When I woke from the Vision I found that I could both write and speak it. It is… strange." I paused. "It feels like gold threads in my mind." I glanced at him, wondering if he would think a madman of me. He did no such thing. He just nodded again and bit his lips. Something like a shadow of uncertainty passed over his face.

_You are so, so, so slow, sloth mine. So._

I startled a little. Snowcloud was back from the dock and, by the feel of it, busy plotting a daring thievery of the kitchen. And eavesdropping.

_Of course I eavesdrop. You are endlessly entertaining. It is part of the reason I chose you as my human companion. Now, kindly, be silent. I may be able to steal that haunch if neither of you distract me._

I turned toward the Fool. He was smiling.

"She is a marvel, isn't she?" I nodded. It did not surprise me he was able to hear it. Not anymore.

"Yes, though I wish she was less…" I groped for a word to describe Snowcloud. I failed.

"You were talking about the Ancient White Language." I paused and frowned. "Would you like to learn it?" I proposed, eyeing him.

His eyes lit up like a fire had been kindled inside him and he leaned toward me, eagerly. "Would you teach me?"

I looked back, surprised. "Of course." I stood up and dragged a chair behind the desk. He moved his own to make place for me. I took up the brush. He cocked himself toward me. "Here, we can start with this…"

 

The morning after I woke first. It was rare, very rare, for me to wake before my friend. He was still resting when I opened my eyes, his knees draw up almost to his chin, dark hair scattered over the pillow, one long fingered hand resting close to his face, the elegant fingers slowly curled next to his cheek. It was dark still, and in the window the horizon had just started to show the lines of light that are the heralds of dawn. I frowned, wondering what had woken me. We had been up till almost to midnight, me teaching him the words and the pronunciation of the ancient Ieldřyr's language. He was an apt student, eager to learn and quick of mind. I blinked sleepily and put my head back on the pillow, sneaking an arm around his waist and breathing in his fine hair. I could have another hour of sleeping, I thought.

_You could, Father. See you in the morning, then._

Suddenly, I was wide awake.

_Chyne?_ I Sskilled, in disbelief. The words were too sharp and clear to come from far-away.

A ripple of tired amusement passed in the Skill-link. _Indeed, Father. And Bitter Moon is here, as well. Just arrived from the White Road._

I disentangled myself from the Fool as quietly as I could. He mumbled in the cushion and groped around without waking. He seized the pillow and hugged it, burying his face in it.

I left my bed and walked to my study, as stealthily as I could. Here, a lamp shines all the night, in case I would need anything during nighttime. I frowned and threw on a robe.

_Where are you?_

_In my room. And tired beyond belief. Snowcloud tells me you are a hero, Father. Again._

I snorted. _She never tells me those things. I am coming._

Her laughter was as pleasant to my mind as it was to my ears. I smiled and left my quarters.

When we were drawing the plans for the building that would become the Garden Palace, quarters for all the important aides had been incorporated in the main building. So there are rooms for the steward, for the governess, for the Princes' nurses, for the Stablemaster, and many more. Closer to the Royal Quarters, there are the rooms appointed for the Skillmaster. Those, Chyne had elected to be her own.

I met none as I walked briskly toward them. But, if it is true that a Palace such as this never sleep, it is also true that life moves inside it like the tide flows and now, so close to dawn, it was too late for cleaning and too soon to bring viands to those who preferred to take their first meal in their bed. Most servants who were awake were in the stables, kennels and in the kitchen. As such, I stepped into Chyne's rooms unheralded.

Her rooms are much like her, a strange blend of Six Duchies and Clerres. Her walls are bare save for some tapestries, many of which are of Barbarian craftsmanship. Her furniture too is sparse. A desk and two chairs are all that are in her study, but of exquisite building and evidently Vietmaran design. The floor is covered by a green and yellow carpet. Currently, Snowcloud was strewn over it, her white bushy tail thumping the ground and her nose nuzzling Chyne's cheek. I smiled when my wolf-dog turned her blue eyes to me. Chyne smiled, too. She was dressed in a simple robe of rough silk, that made her look even younger than her eighteen years. I have often wondered about both Chyne and Fizek.  Both of them are much more mature than I was at their age, or, for the matter, more mature than Hap used to be. Perhaps it was something in their blood, of perhaps it was the circumstance of their lives, I mused.

Still, the more I looked at Chyne, the more worried I became. Her fair skin had a yellow hue, and her green eyes were deep set and surrounded by shadows. By the way she blinked them and the little frown constantly on her brow, I doubted not that her head ached in a Skill headache. Her brown hair was dark with water. I frowned. The Jungle is hard on the unwary, and fighting Demons with Skill alone is by far more draining than using Skill and Wit together. It is my Wit, when I fight, that gives me the aim to thrust my Skill through the Demon. But Chyne has no Wit, nor has Bitter Moon. When they battle those creatures they must use a wider range, and as such much of the Skill is wasted. As I watched my daughter, I felt a growing fear that she had overused herself.

"Hello, Father. Just back." Her voice did little to dispel my worry. It was tired and drained. She met my eyes and smiled ruefully.

"I may have exaggerated. We fought several Demons made by that Shaman. Damn, it was good. It found some way to ground them in Waitan. How, I cannot tell you. We destroyed no less than seven, before it flew the Ruins." She sighed and hid her face in Snowcloud's neck. My companion whined and lapped her hand.

_She is tired, Changer. She needs rest. Much of it. It was a hard hunt, and a meatless one at that._

I nodded at Snowcloud.

"I am going to leave soon, Chyne. For the Vei's Province."

She stirred a bit, peeking at me from over Snowcloud's back.

She frowned. "The canals?" 

I nodded at her. "Yes. I shall go in disguise." I paused. "You will stay here. Take care of the Little Lady. She has started to talk again, a little. And she knows you. When you can, start teaching her the Skill." I eyed her again. "But don't exaggerate. There is time for that." I debated whatever I should tell her of the knowledge that the Little Lady may had, but swiftly renounced the idea. Knowing it could prompt her to try to create a Skill-link with Quy too soon, and by the look of her, my daughter was several days before she could attempt anything like that without pain  or risk.

She nodded and groaned, curling up around Snowcloud's flask as she had done since the very first day I found her. Snowcloud lapped her cheek. By the light of the only lamp, she looked small and frail. I leaned on her and caressed her brown hair. They were fine, and slightly wet under my finger. The love I felt surprised me, but doesn't love always do so? I smiled.

"Rest now, Chyne. I have no doubt Snowcloud will stay with you."

_Of course._

I smiled at Snowcloud and scratched her throat. When Chyne failed to answer I glanced back at her. Her eyelids had covered her eyes, and her breath was deep and even. I smiled.

_Let the cub sleep, brother mine. Isn't she a strong hunter? Isn't she a brave packmate?_

My smile widened at Snowcloud's words and the pride that accompanied them.

_She is at that. And much more._

I stood up and walked back to my room, as silentas I could. I met a couple of servants, coming into the rooms to bring waters for the morning ablutions. They bowed at me too deeply for me to recognize their faces. I nodded at them.

When I came back into my Quarters I was not surprised that the Fool had already left. On my desk there was a note, written in the language of my birthplace. "This evening, in your rooms."

I lifted my eyebrows, and wondered what my friend was talking about. When I quested for him, I found him in the Artists Quarter already. I poked at our connection and I felt something poke back, playfully. I smiled and shook my head.

Then I went to prepare for the day.

 

The morning passed much as I had expected: in tedious work. I had a meeting with Citymaster Great Trainer Atid to plan for the implementation of the Schooling Law and that alone took almost all morning. A King's law doesn't make a change, by itself. It is just as likely, and sometimes more so, that it will be left a dead writing. Debating on the best way to ensure compliance by both cities and parents on this regard was not easy, but I left feeling cheered. I had agreed with Atid that a free meal would be given to all children who would attend their lesson, given by either White Monks or trainee Huans. A child can't make enough, by its own effort, to repaid the price of a meal. It would be more logical, for parents who needed the strength of all of their offspring to survive, to send the child to learn and get the free victuals in the morning, and put the child to work in the afternoon.

Vien had been busy as well, preparing the fake retinue. It had been decided that we would pretend to depart to Fisil, and my Huan started to spread the rumour we would go from there to Dushanbe. Instead, we would go back to Silvarin's harbor, and we would take a boat from here to Seel.

I met Bitter Moon. She was in no better shape than Chyne, but she insisted in coming with us, to reach Dushanbe by land. I forbade her. She was still too tired and worn by her battling Demons in the Jungle to be able to stand a sea voyage so soon, for we had decided to depart the very day after. Instead, she would be a part of the fake retinue that would go all the way to Fisil, with Vien. My Huan could not come with us. Only the Fool, Snowcloud and I would go to the Vei Province, and to Lụcngọc, the Little Lady Quy's castle.

In the end, the sun was setting when I made my way back into my quarters. I was tired, but pleased. In spite of the little time, we would be ready to leave in the morn. Vien was making the last preparations with the fishermen who would leave us to Seel in that very moment. I smiled. The idea of some time spent as something different from King Chihn was pleasant. I had been back for less than a moon, but the part already chafed me. It used not to, and as I walked I wondered why. Perhaps because of my friend. The effort to hide our meetings was hard on both of us. We had never been good at it, I thought ruefully, recalling our ill-fated time as Lord Golden and Tom Badgerlock. This time she would go as Artist Auburn, making her way back to Dothi'Ca'Chihn after spending some time in the Artists Quarter of the Garden Palace. I had no idea of who I would be. I shrugged. I had time to think it through still.

Many people bowed to me, for it was time to sup dinner. I had not eaten myself since the midday before, when Vien had ambushed me with sweet and sour pork and 1000 years soup, but I was not hungry. I skipped the Great Hall, where the meal was set, and went to my rooms.

"Here you are. Sit down. It is time we go to work."

I looked around. My study had been turned upside down. Close to the fire there was a large basin with clear water and another, deeper, whose water was an uninviting black colour. My desk had been cleaned of papers, and a cloth had been placed as a cover. Over the towel, a bowl filled with something very like greenish mud. I glanced at my friend, dressed in the clothes of Auburn, and then at the stuff. I touched it and then sniffed. It smelled like hay, or dried grass.

I raised an eyebrow to my friend.

"Henna." He explained. "To change your hair colour. Take your tunic off. This will need time."

I sat at the chair as my friend set to work. As I watched him working the strange green mixture with a spatula, I wondered what I had put myself into then resigned myself to it. It was too late to change it in any case. I steeled myself to endure it, under the amused gaze of my over pleased Dhil'a.


	6. Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> So, my story is no more a WIP! It is done! Finished! Yayyyy :D   
> I have the whole thing in my pc, now. Isn't it great?^_____^ 290k words total. Oh myy... :D

 

 

 

** Chapter Five: Dream **

 

_The Sack of Lhansa is one of the worst moments in Clerres' History, and the worst in recent history._

_Lhansa, Capital City of Liantharin, used to be a place of beauty and finery second to none in Clerres, save perhaps for the most beautiful of the White Temples of Behit._

_Lhansa was built in a bight of the Baise River. While the position was uniquely favourable for trade, there was little actual space to build houses, and at least a third of it was taken by the Royal Palace, called the Endless Palace, a name with much irony. As such, Lhansa was also named the Rich City, for only Nobles and affluent Merchants could afford the very limited spaces there. It was said that a house in Lhansa was valued in its weight in silver. This peculiarity bred two other distinctive features of the city: the grandness of the mansions, which  had to house both the Family itself and the servants and guests, and their elevation. Most of the houses were made by pagoda's towers, often a number of them, with several floors. The towers were of different heights, and each of them had a distinctive colour, the fairer one signaling the nobility, the darker one the merchant houses. The curved eaves of the roofs refracted light, so that in a clear day they looked like graceful, tall-stemed flowers. Ancient trees with flowers pleasing to both the eyes and the noseandplentiful foliage were planted between the houses and in the gardens and around the street. Split into two or more sentences As there was no poverty, there was no filth or squalor. Everything was beautiful and gay._

_It is said that people walking the White Road would stop at the gates of Lhansa and gaze, in wonder  when the trees were in bloom, sometimes for hours, and that people would come from all of Clerres only to walk on its streets and gaze in wonder at the majestic and smaragdine Endless Palace, at the austere chalybeous Great Trainer Houses, at the White Temple, while chimingcharming fountains cooled the air and gladdened the heart._

_It is said so, and it is true._

_Lhansa was many things, among them exquisite, prosperous, dazzling and graceful. But it was no stronghold. It wasn't build to withstand an invasion. Why would it be? There had been nonesince recorded history. Such things didn't happen in Liantharin. Even when the Civil War begun, nobody thought of such a heinous crime. Even when the Iduyans broke the border, no one thought of readying Lhansa for battle, in spite of the recommendation of Captain Chihn, who would later become King Chihn._

_When the Iduyans' came, only one man had mind enough to prepare. Of the bravery and forethought of Great Trainer Atid much has been said , but never it will be enough. Still, too few people heeded his warning, and fled whilst there was still time to flee. Many more woke on that fateful day, to find the Iduyans and their Demons on the White Road, gazing at Lhansa, but not as the  travelers once had, with wonder and awe, but as a vulture would look at its prey, with gluttony and greed._

_The Shamans and their Demons came. Never before or since the Iduyans' managed to assemble such a force, never before or since had something like that  had been seen, and I pray it will not, not ever, be seen again._

_Demons of all sizes and shapes poured over the well-cobbled street of the city, a lurid sight in such a graceful place. Ant and Centipedes, Spider and Scorpion Demons dripping their pieces on the street. Fire, Water, Earth and Air Demons rumbling between the trees. They wreaked havoc wherever they went, destroying the lithe towers, burning the delicate statues, trashing all that was beautiful and holy. It was spring, and the trees were in bloom. It looked blasphemous in that scenery of utter destruction. And yet, the trees themselves were not spared. I recall a beautiful cherry tree, the flowers all open, engulfed by an Ant Demon. The creatures devoured every blossom, leaving behind a blackened stump._

_People were not spared either. All who had not managed to flee, which were the majority, were killed. Men, women, and children. Noble babies, those blossoms of Liantharin, cried as the scorpions of the Scorpion Demons ate them alive, their fathers and mothers burning in the never-ending flames of the Fire Demons, or drowned by the Water Demons. Screams took the place of laughter, the sound of wreckage the one of music._

_For those who had managed to escape, Fate was not kinder. The travel betwixt Lhansa and Vietmar is almost 63 miles. A man in good health can make it in five days, four if he is not carrying weight. A Road Horse makes it in one, or one and half. But those weren't people in good health, and few of them had horses of any kind. And the second day, they learnt they were pursued by the very same monsters they had seen laying their city to ruin._

_Many died in those days on the road. Nobility and merchants fared worse than servants, less used as they were to hardship and without the enterprise to pack food and drinks, so used  were they to leave such tasks to their domestics. When the second night fell, despondency enveloped the miserable train of humanity. Belongings were abandoned. People were separated from their families. Husbands searched for wives. Mothers called out for their children. Little children, abandoned, begged all who passed for help._

_Most of those who made it to Thang Long before the Iduyans' did lived._

_The others didn't._

_Much has been said about the Battle of Thang Long. I shall only add this: it was wisdom, nay, foresight, that made Than Bà Sendàr choose Xanhà Doi Chihn as his King-Brother. A barbarian he may be, but he stopped the Iduyans. For this alone, I call him a Child of Fate._

_After the Battle of Thang Long and the subsequent defeat of the Iduyans at Gyadas in Uzkabat, Liantharin did not see other battles, or butchery, of the like of the Sack of Lhansa. Whilst the Iduyans haven't stopped their ransacking of Liantharin, it is true that their incursion is much diminished, both in frequency and in strength. Now, most of the damage of the small parties that still roam Liantharin is done by fear, rather than by wanton destruction._

_The reason of this is unclear. Some claims that the Iduyans' thirst for blood is quenched. Some claims that a Holy Man, come from elsewhere, counseled caution. Some other still believe that a drought, or a volcano, or some other natural disaster had pushed the Iduyans' away from their usual grounds and toward Liantharin, and now that the situation is normal again most of them are back at their ancestral home. Some still talk of the number of Iduyans, and even more so Shamans rare among the Tribes that have been killed in the Vietmaran and Uzkabatan's borders. The truth is unknown to me, and I'll vouch for none of those rumors._

_But whatever the truth lies, if there is such a thing, I remember Lhansa how it was, when the full moon of Spring rose upon the bright, elegant roof of the pagodas, and the river and fountains sang, and the breeze carried the petals of flower to carpet the street._

_And I weep._

_"Remembering Lhansa"_

_By Lin Sun,_

_once of the Min Gong Family Houn_

 

The morning after I stood at the gate, Silvarin stretching behind my shoulders, sitting morosely on Toiden as I waited for the Great Trainer and CitymasterAtid to finish the ceremony of Closing the Gates.

As he spoke, I watched the Jungle, enchanted as always from the buzzing of life I could feel shifting at the far side of my consciousness. The jungle is almost as addictive as the Skill for the Witted ones. The sun made the leaves, all of different sizes and greens, shine. Flashes of colours, hidden flowers, and even more hidden insects sparkled when the wind blew away the leafy cover. A low mist floated around the tallest palms and trees, feet above my head. A faraway scream echoed somewhere in the depths.

Ruefully, I reflected on how inadequate my current attire was for such a setting, for I was decked in all the finery of the Vietmar's Kings, my long robe so heavy with gold threads that the black fabric disappeared under the careful embroidery, my under-shirt of the finest cotton, so soft to be almost transparent, and my trousers and boots fairly tinkling with precious metal and amber. I had jingling earrings dangling from my lobes, carefully crafted to be at once complicated and light. I was also wearing a headdress.

Headdresses  were one of my first battles with Vien. Custom demands them from Kings and High Nobles. After my adoption as Sendàr‘s King-Brother and subsequent coronation, I have always steadfastly refused to wear one. They are nothing like the light golden coronet that the Prince and King-In-Waiting wears in the Six Duchies, nor as light as the hair-net of gold that the King alone can don. Instead, the headdress of the Kings of Vietmar should sport is made of two rigid domes, that, when matched, looks much like a chicken egg, if chicken eggs were as big as a big man‘s head and made of pure amber, inlaid with gold. The rounder one is put over the head, and the more pointy one goes over it. This headdress adds a good twelve inches to my height and it is full of dangling bits of gold and amber that catches the light and tingles as I move, which I must do with care not to dislodge it, even if it is kept in place by several hatpins plunged into my hair and into my scalp.

I abhor it.

But, in spite of how much I detested the thing, that day I had to wear it, because it hid my hair completely, and even a fool would have noticed the change in my hair colour. The night before the Fool had applied the weird, hay-smelling paste all over my hair, lock by lock, slathering every single hair one by one, or so it seemed to me. I pointed it out to him, several times. He ignored me and went on in his work, so in the end I resolved to sit as still as possible, cross my arms over my chest and glare, fuming. I heard a sound from behind me but refused to give the Fool the satisfaction of knowing that I had heard him giggle.

When he finished with my hair, he bound it with tarpaulin, and turned toward Snowcloud. She was sitting, nose-deep, in the black water by the fire. Presently her big head emerged and she lolled her tongue at me.

_Brother mine, be a good cub  now._

I glared at her, too, and she barked a laugh. I refused to be needled and clenched my jaw.

The Fool snickered once more.

He did not let me unwrap my hair for two whole hours, while he washed Snowcloud’s fur of two more times with the black-blue water. Every bath made her fur darker. In the end, she was of a dark brown colour instead of spotless white. She pranced in front of the mirror for a while, then, satisfied, went in front of the fire to dry.

I had been watching the work of the Fool on my companion with the corner of my eyes. I knew of his ability with powders and paints, and it was truly impressive. I knew nothing of this, but dying white was certainly easier than dying black. In the end, when he finally washed my hair and combed them, I was startled by the result. Once dried by towel and heat, my hair was a warm auburn colour, almost the same as my friend, and less curly besides.

"I'll do your eyebrows too, but not now. Tomorrow nobody must notice." I nodded, still looking at myself in the mirror. It was unsettling, if useful. Dressed in simple clothes, few people would recognize me as King Chihn. It would have never fooled anybody who knew me, even simply by sight, but I was unknown in most ofVietmar, save in Dushanbe and at the borders, and I planned to go near neither.

So it was that I had to wear the headdress. It was as heavy as I remembered it, and I longed for the moment when I would leave Vien and the little retinue that we had pretended to assemble behind.

In the end I heard the Gate closing and, with a sigh of relief, mentionedmotioned to Toiden to go. He was fully recovered from his meeting with the Fire Demon, but the burns had forced him into a life of little activity, and he was eager to go. He set a brisk trot, preventing talk and forcing everybody behind us to do the same. I smiled at his obvious pleasure and patted his neck. He neighed. His mind was entirely concentrated on the day, the tantalizing scents of the Jungle, with its hundreds of flowers and plants, on the feel of the road under his hooves and the simple pleasure of moving after a long time still.

The morn was beautiful, clear and sharp like the days in the late Rainy Season so often are. The sun was in the unclouded sky, like an amber bead in a sapphire, and the jungle itself had none of the dustiness so common during the Dry Season. Every leaf seemed made by emerald, every flower a jewel's dream. Droplets of water made everything sparkle and glisten and gleam. The air was crisp and pure in my lugs. I smiled and felt my shoulders unknot.

As we progressed in silence, my mind went back to the night. My friend had slept badly and hadwoken me early. I had not been woken by his dreams, but by a sort of soft whimpering, a pleading sound. I had blinked. My room is never in complete darkness, for I prefer a lamp to burn all the night. All too often, in the time of my sleeplessness, I had risen from the bed to work late at nighttime. Still, the lone lamp made the colours mute and the shadows dance. I gazed at my friend, sleeping with his face hid in the pillow, his back to me. Our bond felt like a jagged thing, a confusing hurtling of disjointed notes and sharp colours. I shook my head to clear the last remnant of sleep from my mind, and reached with a hand for my friends shoulder. I shook it gently.

"Fool? Keppet? Wake up .Iit is only a dream."

He thrashed violently, more like a fish caught in a net than a man sleeping in a comfortable bed, thenhe was suddenly still. His eyes opened to meet mine, and for a second as I gazed at them I felt something I cannot name. It was as like a chest punch, when before pain came the lack of breath. So it was. My Dhil'a‘s eyes held an ocean of something like terror, or agony. Then a shutter fell over them and he sat in our bed, his shoulders sagging. I sat on my haunches, looking at him, puzzle d.

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Thank you for waking me. I think.”

“You wished to remain in your nightmare?” I asked, frowning. "It seemed unpleasant."

He let out a puff of breath and lifted a hand to comb his hair away from his face.

“It was. Extremely unpleasant. But sometimes, when such a dream comes repeatedly, it is because I am meant to experience it and heed it. After a time, such dreams can come to make sense. Sometimes.”

I nodded slowly. It made sense. His sight was back to him, and well I knew that it wasn't always, or for the matter often, a pleasant thing to have. I frowned once more.

"It has come to you before, then."

It wasn't a question, but he stole a glance at me and nodded. There was something almost as strange as his previous gaze in his eyes. Surprise. Briefly, I wondered what I had done to astonish him.

"Yes, it ha s. But never before as we slept together." He paused and smiled, a salacious smile. "Taken out of contestcontext, that could be interpreted in interesting ways." He leered. I rolled my eyes, not to be distracted, and was about to ask more of him when I felt Vien enter  the other room. I sighed and rose from the bed.

"We shall talk later. Did you make contact with the fisherman?"

He nodded, scrambling out of the bed himself.

"I did. He will wait for us in the appointed cove, and his boat will bring us to Seel in two or three days." I nodded as Vien entered my bedroom. Fishermen ply their trade around Waitan constantly. Nobody would notice us.My friend had arranged for a boat in a sheltered cove not far from Silvarin, almost a natural harbor. I knew it well, for it was one of the places that could have held Silvarin. It was not even two hours from the city following the coastline, but I would need twice the time to reach it, as I would have to make at least a pretense to go to Fisil by the White Roads. My friend would wait for me there with Snowcloud.

They departed as Vien started to dress me, careful not to touch me directly. Both were snickering at me. I tolerated both the finery and the mockery, as I had  
no other choice.

Now, trotting on the road in the speedy gait that is the hallmark of the Road Horses, I wondered about my friends nightmare. I had all intention to question him more, but such an act had to be done with care. Making direct inquiry on a subject to my friend had always been the best way to stop the flow of information.

We came to the appointed place, a bend in the White Road, after two hours of uneventful, silent travel, interrupted only by the distant call of a monkey, or the low roar of a big cat. I dismounted and handed Toiden to one member of the retinue, a guardsman well known to me for his silence and trustworthiness. My Huan looked at me, his dark eyes worried. We retired behind the screen of the trees. I let out a deep breath as he took out the headdress and shook my head vigorously, enjoying the freedom. I changed the heavy, uncomfortable clothing for the simpler garb my Fool had chosen for me and that I had stored in my saddle bags. I had been almost dreading this, memories of bi-coloured tights still fresh in my mind after all th ese years, but they were remarkably simply and well-made. A long cotton tunic of a rusty brown that came to my knees with gold hemming, and trousers of a darker brown, with simple and sturdy shoes.Inside there was a small package. When I opened it I found a dry travel-ration and a note, penned by my friend's hand, commanding me to eat it. I nodded to myself, then smiled.

Vien had been watching me, my other clothes draped neatly in his arms. His lips were thin. I knew he did not, precisely, object to what I was doing. No man or woman of Clerres would object to such a mission done on the White Prophet‘s behalf, and he knew I would check for the canals  as well. But he wished he could come with me.

I sighed and handed him the headdress. He took it.

"Take care, Vien. Of yourself, and of Waitan, for me.And of Chyne, as well. She needs it, sometimes."

He nodded slowly.

"May Fate be with you, my liege." His voice was carefully neutral as he spoke. Yet his dark eyes were haunted, and followed my movements with something not unlike dread. I smiled ruefully, nodded, took the bag I had prepared the night before while I waited for my hair to dye, and set off.

I walked in the gleaming jungle for two hours, and in spite of what awaited me at the end of our journey, in spite of treachery and unknowns and nightmares, I found myself living in the endless now of the wolves, enjoying the moment for the moment itself. I did not walk. I ran in the Jungle, jumping the roots and fallen logs, aware of all the life around me.

Far too soon my nostrils caught the brackish smell of the ocean, and my ears the sound of waves. I slowed myself to a walk. The jungle comes to the very edge of the ocean there. I felt my bondmates presence with my Wit before I saw herwith my eyes. Snowcloud was playing with the gulls on the clear sand, and the sound of her baying at them mingled with the waves' endless song. I smiled and walked on, nibbling at the Fool's ration. I wasn't surprised by the fisherman's absence. The tide was still wrong for entering the small cove, but I could just make out a speck on the far away horizon. A ship, waiting for the right moment.A hour or so, if my eyes did not deceived me.

I searched for my friend with my gaze. Sitting cross-legged on a boulder, an auburn-haired woman played a pennywhistle with consummate skill. As I approached, she ended her tune with a final scattering of notes and set her instrument aside.

"Keppet." I greeted him fondly.

He cocked his head at me. "Beloved." He answered, scuttling aside from the limestone boulder. I sat by him. His eyes lingered on my eating the ration and he nodded, satisfied.

When I finished eating, he took out a long, thin branch and cocked an eyebrow at me. He started to scratch some of the Ieldryr symbols in the sand. I chuckled, and began my lesson.

I was in the middle of explaining how verbs were in that ancient tongue when my friend spoke, not looking at me.

"Have you ever heard of an invisible man? Or of a man who creates fire?" In spite of his attempt of levity, his tone was strangely serious. I glanced at him and then went back to watch Snowcloud's caper on the beach, the branch still in my hand. She would complain about the sand in her fur, and want to be brushed, I though fondly.

"I have heard something about the magics that cause physical effects, such as invisibility, levitation, giving motion or life to inanimate objects… All the magics of the old legends. But I know of no people who claim these magics as their own. They seem to be solely the stuff of legend, ascribed to folk living in ancient times or distant places." I replied, after a moment.

My friend sighed and nodded, slowly. My answer didn't seem to have surprised him.

"On the other side, I have heard and read of people able to manipulate fire and water. It is talked about in the ancient Skill Scrolls we found." I didn't remind him where. He knew all too well. "But never in my time, nor  have I ever seen one. Perhaps it is a lost power, as the Skill was almost lost." I hypothesized.

He nodded again. I glanced at the boat. It was getting closer. In less than fifteen minutes the fishermen would be within earshot. I called for Snowcloud, who padded back to me, her tongue hanging from her mouth while the Fool erased the signs of our work.

_I have sand everywhere, Brother mine!_ Her mind voice sounded doleful. _I shall need brushing._

I bit my lip to avoid laughing. _I am sure the Scentless One will brush you, sister._

She snorted sand. _So he will.Ah, you have good taste in your chosen bonded, Changer._

Before I could answer, my friend spoke again. His voice was so low I had to strain myself to hear him.

"It is always the same dream. Or nightmare. Some… thing I cannot see, burning. Being set on fire by someone I cannot see, nor hear. He is here. But I cannot tell. All I can tell is that those things are burning. The smoke gets thicker and thicker, and I cannot breathe or see. I don’t know. It all tatters away like cobwebs in the wind. The more I grasp after it, the worse I rend it.”

I glanced at him, but the fishermen's boat was too close to give a private answer, as he had wished it, in all likelihood. The boat itself was a little thing, with only one triangular sail and space for perhaps five people and their catch. An ancient mariner dressed in rough hemp tunic and trousers was sitting on the helm, and two younger, sturdy men in similar clothes, with a kerchief on their heads and barefoot, stood by his side. His sons, probably. I took my bags and put it over my head. I frowned. I didn't expect to fight, yet I had my battle-axe and my bow with me. I had debated on the axe, a weapon too connected with XanhàDoiChihn, for a while, but in the end I chose to take a new, simpler weapon with me. We had promised the fisherm en half the sum now and half at landing, and if I had no reason to doubt the man, I had none to trust him either.

The Fool and I waded toward the ship, while Snowcloud paddled doggy style. When we reached the boat the man closer to me helped to haul me up, whilst the other did the same with the Fool. I helped Snowcloud myself. We sat on the benches to dry. Displaying an uncommon courtesy, Snowcloud went to the other side of the boat to shake herself.

The ship reeked strongly of fish, but it was a weatherly, dry vessel, well kept and well built. Sleeping would be rough, a blanket spread over the selfsame benches we were sitting on, but I had slept in worse places. As the small ship made its way back to the high seas, the two young men at the oar, I thanked Eda that I have never been seasick. The boat lurched far too much for my liking as it was.

"We will stick to the sky in Seel." Stick to the sky? What does that mean? I nodded to my friend and smiled slightly. He was speaking the language of the Six Duchies with me, but she spoke in Vietmaran to the old fisherman.

"As promised, Quan."The Fool said, handing over a small purse.

The fisherman spat in the ocean, but without contempt. By his ease, it was simply a gesture he was used to.

"As promised, Lady Auburn. Who is the fine fellow you have brought with you?" The mariner smiled, displaying a mouth lacking many teeth. Still, his smile was warm and sincere. I glanced at his sons. They seemed to have little of their father cheerfulness, but oaring is hard work, and that could account for it.

Before my friend could speak, I found myself answering.

"I am Keppet. I am Lady Auburn‘s husband."

I'll give this much to my friend. He didn't bat an eye at my declaration. He simply nodded, smiled warmly at me and spoke back to the fisherman.

"We hope it is not too much of a bother."

It was one of the younger fishermen who spoke, the one in the rear, with a kerchief around his neck and bare chest gleaming with sweat in the sun.

"We haven't forgotten what you did for my wife, Lady Auburn. This ain't a problem."

Auburn's smile widened at the man's words. We were leaving the cove, and the old sailor was reading the sail for the wind. Snowcloud had curled up by my feet. She wasn't enjoying this. I petted her browned head and she whimpered a little.

_You are so going to give me back for this, brother mine._

I almost chuckled and then glanced at my friend. He was still speaking with the young fisherman.

"It was nothing. How is Mayling?"

The fisherman grinned back. "She is well, m'lady. Our little one is, too."

"Mayling had a baby?" My Keppettook a woman’s delight in such tidings.

The fisherman, whom I supposed to be this Mayling‘s husband, nodded shyly. I turned my eyes back to the sea and made myself as comfortable as possible on the rough bench. I wasn't surprised the Fool had made friends. There had always been something in him that drew other people to him. A sort of indescribable radiance. And it had been thirty years and more since the last time we had met. Yet, once more, I was forced to confront how much he knew of my history, and how little I knew of his. His imposed time as the White Prophet was little enough. An appearance once or twice a year, if that. I knew not what he had been doing whilst he was not the White Prophet. Perhaps he had been this "Auburn" person.

I sat, carding Snowcloud's fur with my fingers and getting most of the sand out of it. It would be two or three days before we would dock in Seel. I breathed in and prepared to wait.

 


	7. Roads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> Now I want to ask... Do you want to keep the usual 1 chapter at week schedule? We could do 2 at week if you would like :
> 
> This chapter is unbetaed!^^ My fault, really!

 

 

**Chapter Six: Road**

 

 

Ten years after the attack on Calched, the Dragons and their slaves, called by some Elderlings, came back to Kelsingra. Those weren't the dragons who helped the Six Duchies against the Outislander during the Red Ships War. They were dragons of flesh and blood, and they cared little or nothing of us. They came, and took what they wished. Many a paesant found his beast slay, or their flocks decimated by the winged beasts. Many thought it wrong and harmful. Among the most vocal was Princess Bravery, daughter of the King and head of Bravery Coterie.

She had her mother's blood in her, and spent more time in her Motherhouse in the Out Island than on the Seven Duchies, and had no fear of speaking her mind. She spoke of how the White Prophets had hurt the people of the Out Islands and contrived to free the dragons. Her words were heard far and wide, and people muttered. Tales of a pale woman of white skin and rotten heart were suddenly sang by minstrels, and of a man of golden mien and deceitful nature who had unleashed such a cataclysm on the Seven Duchies. King Dutiful compensated the people who had lost beasts and livelihood, and made a policy of it, but many did not like it, and muttered of weakness.

It was a long time before the dragons found the way toward the Stone Quarry. And when it happened, they found the place was not anymore as welcoming as it used to be in centuries begone. They couldn't enter it without pain, physical and mental, without anguish and suffering. They tried once and twice and again, and in one occasion they managed to create a small outpost, only to abbandon it in the following month.

In all of this, everybody praised the wisdom of the young Sacrifice, Cunning, who had become the Seventh Duke and Sacrifice for the Mountain Duchy not two years before, and who was a lad of not even twenty years of age, and on whose territory the Quarry stood. He commanded his people to wait and watch, not to attack. When the Elderlings had to leave, the Qu'tan, the part of the Mountain People who live over the Quarry, destroyed what little the Dragons and their slaves had made, and claimed the Quarry as their own once more.

The Dragons and their slave then sent humans there, to mine the Quarry for their draconic masters. Those were fought off by Cunning's own people, and by the people his brother, King-In-Waiting Prosper, sent there. The people who could control fire and water fought together with the people of the Mountain, and won. Many died, on both sides. But the people of the Seven Duchies were strong and brave, and they fought for what was theirs.

So it was that the people of the Mountain mined the Quarry and sold some of it to the Dragons and their slaves. The Dragons liked not to have to buy what they thought was theirs, because it had been so some thousand of years ago. But they had little choice, as they could not come in the Quarry itself nor send people there.

They took their revenge over the beast of the Seven Duchies, slaying there for their food. Only the King's Compensation allowed this to happen without an uproar of the people. So when Duke Sacrifice Cunning had a son, and named him Aslejval because, as he said during the naming (he did the cerimony in the ancient way, sealing the babe name with earth, fire and water) "the Glacier killed two Whites and trapped a dragon for a thousand years. It seemed appropriated." people laughed and cheered.

Only King Dutiful did neither, and watched his first grandson cry, and stood silent.

 

Memorial of the Twenty Fifth Year of King Dutiful Rein

By Minstrel Hart of Buckkeep

 

 

It was two days and three night before we docked in the harbor of Seel.

Seel is a small harbor, and a small city. Its sea bottom is too shallow, and if the corals that glitter under the clear water give refuge to plentiful of fishes of all shapes and sizes, they also pose a terrible risk to the hull of bigger ship. Who has not heard tales of ships whose hull had been torn away from razor-sharp corals? So the Great Sailers avoided Seel and headed farther, to Dushanbe, whose clear and deep bottom offered a safer anchorage.

As such Seel had never reached the level of prosperity of either Dushanbe or Fisil. Yet the very corals that makes it such a bad harbor also house the fishes that makes for most of its wealth. Seel sells dried fish to all of Vietmar and beyond, and the dried fish ration that makes the staple of the Great Sail Fleet came thence.

I had already been there in my time as Captain Chihn, before Sendàr took notice of me. I remembered the smell of fish in air, and the noise and people, carts and dogs and buildings and twisting streets that led finally to the big White Road that cut from Seel to Thang Long.  But that was not to be seen from my place, sitting still in the fishing boat. The harbor's water was dirty and dark, a bloated corpse of a dog floating not far from us, and other, unmentionable waste resurfacing briefly, only to plunder in the depth again. I wrinkled my nose. The last time I had been there, the water had been purer. The smell, too, was different, the stench of packed, unwashed humanity. I frowned.

The Fool met my eyes. He had not had a possibility to wash in the last two days, and I could guess what our first stop would be. He had turned to thank the fishermen. I had given my thanks before leaving the boats, the first words I had said in all the day. The younger fishers were a silent lot, whilst their father usually spoke with Auburn. It suited me. I had given myself as Auburn's husband, but I knew very little of this facet of my friend. From his words with Quan, I gathered that Auburn had been in Dothi'Ca'Chin, for some time, for she spoke of people there, caravans, and trade, and of her own temporary shop there. But little more. I was fretful, and Snowcloud's annoyance of the small, smelly, unstable vessel seeped into my thoughts as well, so much I had trouble sitting still.

In the end I saw a discreet purse changing hands, but I was almost too busy noticing the differences between this Seel and the one of my memories. Had there always been such a high number of beggars, I wondered.

Snowcloud had bolted as soon as her paws had touched the ground. She was running in the street, running for running's sake, enjoying the feeling of freedom of movement after  the cramped place. Nightseye would have refuse to come by boat. Snowcloud, I reflected ruefully, would come and use it as a bargain for later.

You know me oh so well brother mine. This evening I want a bath. The salt air did awful things to my fur!

Her doleful tone made me chuckle. The Fool appeared by my side on the small, waving wharf. As one, we started to walk toward the city proper. As we went in silence my uneasiness grew together with the signs of decaying. The streets were covered by filth and mud. By the overflowing side canals I could tell that they had not been upkeep as they should have been. Mangy dogs scuttled in the alleys, chasing bands of small children, not unlike the one I joined at my arrival in Buckkeep. The houses themselves were less prosperous than they used to be, with crusted paints and mangled sculptured. I frowned once more in confusion.

We were walking toward what I supposed would be a tavern of some sort, when a man stopped us. He wore the complicated red and yellow armor of the Western Province, but the armor itself was battered and rusty in place. He leered. His very clothes stank of alcohol. I wrinkled my nose in disgust.

"Weell who would ya be?"

I stood up, straightening my shoulder and looked at the guardsman. His small, dark eyes met mine, while I appraised him coolly.

"And who asks?"

The man blinked and his hands fell on his side. I could almost feel my friend's glance at me.

"Who is asking?" I repeated the question quietly.

The man licked his lips and his gaze twitched around. I held my pace.

"Ahhh… Me is Guard Kaur, beg yer perdon, sir. Ye seem new of tha place."

I cocked an eyebrow. I let the silence stretch enough. It was early after noon, the light blazing over the city's roofs, and the street were almost deserted. This was time for rest after eating, not for trade and walking. The Fool touched my arm, lightly, but I didn't waver my gaze.

"I am. And I am out to my business. As you should."

The guardsman's head bobbed ludicrously and he stepped aside, hastily. I started walking again, and resolved to speak with the Citymaster as King Chihn as soon as possible.

My friend had stayed silent. I glanced at him. His lips were thin, and his gaze, when it fell on me, was thoughtful. I could not discern anything through our bond. I looked in front of me, and wondered what I had done.

To my surprise, he did not stop in any of the better houses in the main road that boasted sign of taverns, but pressed on. I shifted my bundle on my shoulders and walked beside him. Snowcloud joined us half a hour later. We were walking by then in a better street, but even there I could see signs of decay. The houses were well kept, but forlorn. Most of the doors were closed, the windows barren. I frowned once more. I glanced at my friend, but he walked doggedly on.

I chose to keep silent.

 Seel was never a great, nor a big, city, but still it took us the best part of the afternoon to find ourselves on the outskirt of the town, on the White Road. The street we passed were lively with the usual trade of a city, fish and fabric, rice and greenstuff, but I had to take care of where I put my feet, else one of the several holes, big and small, would make me trip and fall. Snowcloud trotted by my side, strangely silent. I glanced at her, her fur made black by the Fool's paints. She seemed subdued. Worried, I wondered if the travel had been too much to her.

Stop worrying, brother mine, it is like a mosquito in my ear. I don't like this place, Changer. It smells like dying. Lets go away.

I frowned. You are wise, sister.

Of course I am wise. And beautiful. This black, now, it does become me. She cocked her head to me, one low-tipped ear higher than the other. I chuckled. So did the Fool. I smiled at him. I overhead a merchant speaking in Liantharinan, and his costumer answer in the same language. Several other people spoke the same tongue.

The White Road had enjoyed the customary treatment, and was well kept and maintained. The fresh smell of the rice field was a welcome relief from the low, heavy stench of the city. I glanced behind my shoulder at Seel, and trudged on.

I was not surprise when my friend stopped at the White Inn. By tradition there is one after every city or town of importance. This one, like many of Vietmar, was set in the middle of the road, surrounded by a small garden.It was the same as all the other Dkar Mgron. The buildings was deceptively simple: two square made of stone, covered in white lacquered wood, one smaller than the other, the smallest one on top, The roofs were delicately curved with white-clay shingles. The lower roof extend to create a veranda, supported by four pillars. Its simple beauty was a balm, after the dilapidated town. The stables were on the side, and a hostler was carrying bucks of water for the horses, followed by two small hands. All around, the rice fields extended as far as eyes could see. I walked toward them, noting the canals' conservation. For what I could see in the twilight hour, they seemed well kept, the water of the correct depth and the wheels at the corners turning as they should, bringing water from the channels themselves to the fields. Soon planting would begin. I nodded to myself.

I did not notice my friend 'till he was at my side. He had always been able to surprise me. He waited till I had finished my appraisal before speaking, his features almost hidden by dusk.

"It would be better if you would take a room for both of us." I frowned and looked at the White Inn, then at my friend.

"The monk is somebody you know?" I asked. He shrugged.

"They have all seen me, sooner or later. This one has not been in Behit for years, and he is quite elderly, but I have no way to know how good his memory is."

I nodded.

"I'll take a room for us both. You can enter from the stable."

I waited for his nod, straightened and walked into the room.

The main room was lit with a lively fire and several ornate lamps casted early shadow on the wall, competing with the last, red sunray. The tables, simple yet fine, were strewn strategically to avoid confusion and eavesdropping. I glanced at the decorations, white and silver and cream, simple and yet satisfying to the eyes, and nodded. This was a well-kept White Inn, with a dutiful monk in charge. Behind the counter, a young woman with the light orange clothes of the White Monks regarded me levelly. I bowed courteously, suddenly remembering I was no more King Chihn. She bowed back, not as deeply as I did.

"Honored Monk, I need a great room for the night, for me and my wife and a place for our dog. And food and two baths to be brought to us." I said, keeping my hands in front of me, palms one against the other. The woman, of Uzkabat by her dark skin and confident posture, nodded. Another custom in the White Inns is that no question is asked to none, and none has right to ask any of them. They are of the White Prophet, and he is the only one entitled to inquiry there.

"The second room in the first floor is empty. You can have it." I nodded again and bowed once more. I went into the stable. It was an ample annex, well lit and well cured, made in stone like the rest of the White Inn. The animals' minds that brushed mine as I passed were either pleasantly tired and resting or eating preparing for the night.. I relaxed and smiled. No beast was callously treated here and his or her quiet satisfaction was a balm to my mind. Snowcloud was being petted by one of the small hands, a girl of about ten years of age, her tail wagging furiously. My friend was smiling at the child and speaking. I waited.

"… She is Snowcloud. Not a good name, isn't it?"

The girl nodded sagely, scratching Snowcloud's throat.

"No indeed." She giggled. She reminded me of Chyne at her age. She, too, had giggled like that. "She is named after the King's Hound?"

I raised my eyebrow, but then again, I shouldn't have been surprised that Snowcloud's name was known.

Of course you shouldn't. Everybody knows me. Come on, brother mine.

I snorted and walked on. I nodded at the girl who scuttled back on bare feet and bowed deeply.

"If you can give my hound a bath and a meal of good meat, I shall give you two souns." The girl's eyes widened. Two souns was probably as much as she saw in a month. She nodded vigorously and bowed again.

"Your hound will be well cared for, honorable stranger." She said, formally. I raised my eyes to my friend who was looking at us with a bemused expression.

"I have found a room for us, the second one in the first floor." Auburn smiled at me and nodded.She took her pack and followed me. Snowcloud lolled her tongue at me and wagged her tail, following the small hand. I could feel her keen appreciation at the idea of a bath and food and rest where the ground doesn't shake and move. I snorted in amusement.

The Fool kept her face hidden, and I tried to walk as nothing was afoot. By luck, another man came to the monk, asking for food and board. We managed to reach our room without incidents.

The room was a typical one for the White Inn: a simple square with the bed in a in one corner. A small, yellow-lacquered short closet with some flower in a deceptively simple bow rested in the opposite one. On the third wall, a window gave a view of the rice fields outside. Under the window, was a low desk for writing. As most, indeed all, of Clerres' desks, this one was made for people kneeling, not sitting on chair. The fourth wall held a fireplace, a fire already crackling , for the night could be chilly during the Rainy Season.  In front of the heart, a bathtub, empty for now and a tasteful if simple screen. There was nothing more, as simplicity is the most important feature of the White Inns everywhere in Clerres.

My friend sighed and fell gracefully on the bed. Before I could speak, two serving boys came bearing buckets of both hot and cold water. Immediately, like one of the spring puppets I have see in Atremandia, he sprang up again. I chuckled.

"You can have the first bath." I told him as the servants left, closing the door behind them.

He put the screen around the bathtub as I sat on the bed myself, sighing. I could hear him pouring the water in the tub. I quested for Snowcloud. She was having her own bath, vigorously scrubbed by two stable hands, and enjoying every minute of it. I frowned and opened my eyes, looking at the simple screen. I could almost make the silhouette of my friend behind the thick paper, like a shadow puppet, his shade casted over the screen by the flickering flames. I watched it, enjoying his graceful movement as he eased himself in the bath, before speaking.

"Snowcloud is getting a bath herself. Will the colour hold?" I asked, recalling how easy cloth loses its own.

"Yes. I used henna with thomat oil on both your hair. It will stay till the never hair grow." I groaned, looking forward to month of headddress and my friend chuckled at me. I could hear him splashing luxuriously while humming a tune. It was a common one in Clerres, about two lovers parted by Time.

I smiled and stood up.

"I'll go to take our food." I did not wait for his answer and made my way downstairs. As I walked, the daily downpour of the Rainy season began in earnest. The curtain of rain hid the world beyond the windows as effectively as a screen.

The main room was half empty when I walked in. I went to the counter, and the young woman in the monk's robe handed me a tray covered with a clean cloth. I glanced at her. Her liquid, brown eyes reminded me of Chundra. I wondered if she was a subordinate of the elderly monk my friend had spoken about. I thanked her and went upstairs.

As I made to go, two people on a table by the stair spoke up.

"Perhaps this will drown them rats." Said the first. I glanced about. He was dressed in a common garb, but finer than a fisherman. A fish merchant, perhaps.

The second one, his servant or helper by his look, was too busy eating the fish stew to speak, but nodded. I frowned and walked on, not wanting to be caught listening. I doubted he was talking about vermin.

I opened the door with my shoulder and step in. Beloved stood already clean and properly dressed in a long, flowing robe adequate to sleep and was adjusting his cuffs. He shot me an amused glance when I snorted. I left the tray on the desk.

I was relieved to see that this White Inn, like some, had a clever system to drain the bathwater in the corner. It is little more than a tube that leads to a cistern outside, made so to fit the tub. It makes emptying the bath easy, and my friend had already done it. My muscles were complaining the cramped days, and I feared a beginning of my usual pains.

I filled the tub with water kept warm by the fire, trying to waste as little as I could, and put some scented oil and soap. The hot bath almost hurt my muscles and I took a sharp breath before releasing it and leaning back among the splashing water. The rain had not abated. It veiled us in a world of silence. My mind drifted to the sights of the day and I frowned.

"Seel was not always like this." It surprised me first, speaking out loud. My friend, from behind the screen, spoke.

"Seel has taken the blunt of the refugees, Fitz. Men and women with nothing at their name but the clothes on their backs. And some not even those." His voice was soft, doleful.

I frowned. "The Sack of Lhansa was twelve years ago. There have not been many refugees in between. We have made provisions for many of those, in Waitan and Dothi'Ca'Chinh." I did not know why I felt like I needed to excuse myself.

I heard my friend sighing.

"You did. And many, most perhaps, are back to a normal life, or as normal as possible. But some had not the strength even for that, or were too young, or too old, or too set in their ways to accept change. Those who couldn't were left behind in Seel, like dregs in a wine cup." The quiet pain in his voice was painful to hear. I finished to wash my hair and stood up to dry myself. I knew how soft he was, behind his armor of secrets and silences. He was the White Prophet, and he had not been able to change this. Briefly, as I toweled myself dry, I wondered if he felt guilty. His words in other places and time came back to me. I bit my lips.

I stepped outside the screen to find him sitting at the desk, the food almost untouched, and looking outside, at the curtain of rain.

I went by him and touched his shoulder. He sighed and turned to look at me. He regarded me deliberately, from my bare chest to my loose trousers, then he met my eyes and deliberately raised an eyebrow, a coy smile on his narrow face. I rolled my eyes.

"Finish eating. You will have to tell me something about Auburn, or I won't be able to pretend to be your husband."

I say, sitting down myself. He glanced at me, surprise flickering in his gaze for a second, and then nodded. I perused the dishes. Fish stew, rice, and a sweet made of crushed rice and sweet beans. Simple, hearty food. I nodded, satisfied. I was, with my surprise, quite hungry. I started to eat.

"There is not much you need to know. Auburn is a carver of wood. She is from Liantharin, but she had traveled everywhere in Clerres." I nodded. Artisans and artists whose goods were small enough to carry often preferred to peddle their wares by themselves, traveling alone or in congenial groups over the White Roads. Their safety made the need for caravans and guards useless, and the White Inns gave a quiet, secure place to sleep at night. "I had my main shop at Lhansa." I put my spoon down. He hurried on. "I left perhaps a month before the Sack, and was not there when it happened. But I helped the refugees when they came after the Battle of Thang Long."

I smiled. This I could well believe. The flickering light of the lamps over the table casted strange shadows over his face, highlighting his high cheekbones and his hairline, but shrouding his eyes in darkness.

"Among them one of the fishermen's wife." I said, slowly.

He nodded and folded his hands in front of himself and looked down.

"Among others, yes. I relocated to Dothi'Ca'Chihn after. I travel a lot. My wares are… quite asked for." There was a hint of pride in his voice. He resumed eating. I smiled again.

"Very well. I supposed I'll learn the rest as we go. Where could you have acquired a husband?" I asked. He glanced up from his plate, surprised.

"You plan to continue with that pretense."

I shrugged. "What else could work? I am no artisan myself. We could pose as an artist and her husband." I frowned, thoughtful. I felt suddenly wary of having given my true name to the fishers, realizing the immensity of what I had done. It was the old naming magic: if I know how you are truly named, I have power over you. If I tell you my name, I grant you that power. I bit my lips. Why had I, indeed? I wondered if changing it would not be better, yet I was strangely reluctant to do so. I am not my friend, able to shed identities as other shed clothes.

The Fool glanced up at me, nibbling daintily at the sweet. I gathered the uses plates and set them outside. The servants would take them thence.

In the end, my friend nodded, a strange reluctance in his movements. I wondered at it. "It makes sense." He admitted. He rose suddenly, graceful as a cat. He stretched, a sinuous writhing that looked as if he unfastened his bones from his joints and then put himself together again. He looked on me fondly. I yawned and went for the bed. It had been a long day, and tomorrow we faced another of hard riding if we wanted to be at Lụcngọc before the sunset. Most of the journey would be on the White Road, but we would have to part from it in the Aquamarine Gulf and I had little faith on the status of those roads.

My friend extinguished the lamp and came, in the darkness punctuated by the endless rain. The bed was comfortable, the lines cool. We were both too tired for our customary lesson in the Ieldryr’s Language. I sighed and quested for Snowcloud, finding her drowsing in a warm bed of hay in an empty stable, belly full and dreaming of hunting in the endless Jungle. I smiled and retreated from her thoughts. I opened my eyes to find the face of my friend, his long hair bound by a ribbon behind his neck, looming over me. I could feel, more than see, his smile. I smiled back, as drowsily as Snowcloud. 

He chuckled. "So, Keppet is going to be my husband?" He teased me. I frowned, my earlier musing coming back to me, but nodded grudgingly.

"Kep perhaps is better. I do not wish for all and everybody to go around calling me so." I said, uncomfortable. I could hear plainly the reluctance in my own voice. He chuckled and fell on his part of the bed, curling himself up.

"Why Keppet at all? It is a strange word." I glanced at him, surprised at his question.

"Didn't I tell you?" I blurted out. Then I bit my lips. I have almost mastered my bad habit of speaking before thinking, but my Fool brings back old inclinations in me.

"Tell me what?"

I shrugged and moved closer, casting wide with my right arm. My friend came willingly, his body molding against my side as if he was made of putty. He rest his head over my chest.

"It is my name. What my mother called me at my birth."

He went still.

I turned my head, but his own face was hid in my chest. He was not breathing. A memory of a time long ago, of a creature of evil who nonetheless spoke a truth. Of ice, and a pain greater than anything I had ever known, before or since.

"Did you ever call him by your name, to show him that he was as dear to you as your own life? Did you? Or were you too much of a coward to let him know?”

I had been too much of a coward in my life, and toward many who had dared to love me. But toward none as much as the golden creature who stood shock still in my arms, our bond as beautiful as the northern sky when the coloured lights dances high above, and just as baffling.

I pressed his form against my flank and my lips against his fine, silky hair.

"Keppet." I called him, quietly, in the darkness punctuated by endless rain.

He breathed.

"Beloved." He said, softly. And I smile, for it was an answer. I let his feeling, as clear and eerie as they were, wash over me, sharp and unthreatening. Just before sleep claimed me, my Dhil'a sensations became clear to me, as clear as my own.

I smiled sleepily as my joy, like a bell answering another, echoed his. I fell asleep, lulled by our shared melodies.

 


	8. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> So... I'll ask Serie11 it it would be ok for her to beta two chapters at week :D Stay tuned!

 

 

 

**_ Interlude _ **

**__ **

__

_The two men stand in the road._

_One of them is lithe and graceful, his skin a darkish grey, the same hue as his hair. His stance is rigid, but he carries himself with ease._

_The second is taller and sturdier, with wide shoulders and long legs. His hair is the colour of spun gold in the light, and his eyes are a slate grey, not unlike the other man‘s skin. Half of his face is smooth and fine, with high cheekbone and full lips. The other half is the stuff of nightmares, an eye half-closed and the cheek a mass of puckered flesh that goes down on his neck._

_The road stretches in front of them. It is long, and sinuous. It goes all the way to the far away mountain. It is a long, long road in front of them._

_Behind them there is a city. The buildings are roughly conic, round rooms of diminishing <side>size, one on top of the other. In the morning light, they glisten and shimmer, mosaics and lacquers of all colours making abstract, winding patterns. Spirals and intertwining wheels in all the colours of the rainbow. All is new and gleaming. The sun above is hot, shining on the hills and beyond them, on the coast. Summer is at its peak, the grasses tall and the trees in full bloom. _

_Yet the people watching in silence at the men on the road are dressed with relatively heavy clothes. Long sleeves and leg pants of colourful flowing fabrics. Not a few of them have hats on. The clothes and building are in all different hues, but the people's mien is white. White hair, skin and colourless eyes fixed on the youth on the road._

_Like them, the grey man is petite,  slender and slight, an impression of agility and resilience in the elegant lines of his long-limbed body. Unlike them, his hair is the grey-blue of some stone, and his skin is almost the same shade. Two twin lines sneak from behind his clothes and up his hairline, like vines, and not unlike the symbols on the buildings._

_The other man is dressed in lighter clothes, his arm and chest bared and his trousers covering him up from the knee, his feet bare as <the>his arms. What cloth he has is of the same kind of theirs, colourful and complicated. Over his chest, a red stone glistens. _

_Vanyel turns and watches his people. The city is big but not many are left to populate it. And the children among them are precious few, as are the elder. His grayblue eyes sweep over the Nests. So few of them. So few. He hadn't told them to come. They had known that this was the Time, and that they had to leave them. So they came to part ways. Flint watches his Dhil’a from the corner of his eyes. He doesn't speak. Over his broad shoulder he has a backpack, filled with all that is needed._

_One of the white people, male or female, parts from the rest, hand him a full backpack. With a curt nod, Vanyel takes it and turns his back to the city that had been his home for six years and starts walking toward the prairies. Before Flint can follow him, another creature, as white as the snow upon the mountain, walks toward the blonde man. Flint looks at the Ieldra, a frown in his eyes. The White gives him a backpack._

_As Flint reaches for it, the Ieldra's face breaks in a smile, the first one from such lineaments, save the ones he had from Vanyel. Before Flint can speak, the White turns back to be among his own._

_Flint turns and runs to fall in step  with Vanyel. He steals a glance at his Dhil’a, but Vanyel’s face is quiet and distant, his eyes set on when his can’t see._

_They walk on, towards the prairie._

_______

_The mountains rise, a sharp white against the darker sky. They are young mountains as Stone counts time, not yet wearied down by water and wind. Not yet colonized by life._

_The landscape is stark: jagged rocks outlined by colourless ice, as sharp as a flint blade. Even the sky is still. No clouds. No sun. Only the wind owls endlessly, singing a song of death among the ravines and making pebbles roll in its wake, the sound echoing in the cold air. Rock and Ice had the World before Life came, and here they haven’t surrendered their sovereigns._

_The same forces that created them made long gashes into their flanks that would be called passes in a warmer time than the one of Ice. Now, even when it is summer on the plain in them frost reigns, making the rocks slippery and the steps dangerous, while its sibling the snow hides unexpected gullies_

_Still, Life is strong. As Water erodes Rock, so Life seeps in every nook and cranny. The small life come first, the unseen one that ties all together, and then plants. Scruffy bushes, coarse twigs whose seeds had been borne by the very wind that tries to pry them from the rocks that give them meagre shelter. Still, Life perseveres._

_With plants come animals, the small mice and shrews making their home among the thorny bushes, and the kites and eagles that don't fear the heights and hunt in them. After the small life paves the way, big life comes in. A ravine, a pass blocked, and the surefooted reindeer came through the high passes, searching for another road toward the summer pastures. And with them come the great hunters._

_Yet the Rock and Ice are wary to let go of their reign. Life is still too new and too fresh to have indented much of the stark landscape, still a simphonysymphony of greys and whites, with some dusty green and stubborn brown when the occasional bush peeks through. Life is hidden, if present._

_Save for the tent._

_It is nothing like the bleak rocks or the rough brushes. It is colourful and gay, bright yellows and oranges patches, vivid blue spirals and shining green filaments. It is soft, its fabric strong yet fine. Protected from the wind by a protruding rock, anchored with care to the earth, its inhabitants don't fear the cold. A puff of smoke rises, snatched and tossed by the wild air. Inside the tent a lively fire in a metal brazier illuminates the place, casting dancing shadows over the colourful walls. Two men sit by it, sharing a drink of warm tea in carefully carved cups._

_One is the same colour of the Mountains, his skin and feathered hair a shade of gray, his wide, unmoving eyes as cold as the ice that surround them. He sits huddled by several blankets, decorated as the tent itself._

_The other's colour is as gay as the tent: lively blue-grey eyes, and yellow hair, his skin a soft tone between brown and pink. He too is dressed warmly, with furs around his wrists and neck and rimming his hood, but he doesn't huddle against the cold like the other man, and sits straight, his legs crossed. Over his chest, a green stone set in gold and stone reflects the light of the flames._

_Flint sips the tea and eyes Vanyel, who puts the covers tighter around him._

_"The other pass was closed. The Reindeer will have to take this one. I was thinking of going hunting, we need more meat. It is incredible how much we have eaten." Flint shakes his head. "And if we have time to tan the hides the reindeer's fur is perfect to make warm blankets." The human eyes the White. "I suppose that this is why you insisted to go through  here." He added, with something like a smile playing in his lips._

_Vanyel's eyes flashes at the mention of warmth, but doesn’t answer, cocking his head to his side in a birdlike gesture._

_"A good idea. I'll wait for you there. When you will have taken the reindeer I'll help you prepare it." The Seer nods towards the instruments to do so, the salt and herbs, the knifes and scrapers, all in a neat bundle by the back of the tent._

_Flint glances again at Vanyel and nods, rising up his feet. He takes two strong, long spears, tipped in precious metal that flashes deadly as it catches the shadows of the braziers. The staffs are of polished oak, not a nook or cranny to deviate the aim, and the atlatl is perfect, long as half of Flint's arm and carved with symbols not unlike the ones on the tent and clothes. The human dons a simple coat of furs over the bright clothes, take an empty backpack and a canteen of melted ice and walks out._

_Vanyel watches the flap of the tent close, and shivers in the cold. Then the Seer smiles a slow smile, and pokes at the fire, watching as it dances higher. He crawls over the back of the tent, taking out the meat he had hidden there. The Seer eyes it speculatively. Enough for several days._

_He takes out a strip of dried meat and starts munching, relaxing in the warm tent. He takes his long seaxes from under the blankets and unsheathes them, the grey blades glistening in the firelight._

_The Seer predisposes himself for the wait. He knows it will be long._

____

_The Smilodon awaits._

_Its powerful, compact body is frozen behind the boulder, every muscle immobile. Only its nose vibrates every time that the wind brings to him the smell of its prey. Reindeer. Its spotted fur blends with the shadows, and the short, coarse mane on his neck protects him from the cold. The big fangs in his mouth glisten with saliva. It is hungry._

_It growls. It is not a full-grown Smilodon, the heaviest of the feline and mightiest of the predators. He has just seen two winters, and he had left his pride two moons before, to avoid the mighty male Smilodon‘s sharp fangs. The young Smilodon is not used to hunting alone, without the help of the females and of the grown male. His ribcage hurts from a kick by a bison. He had not eaten in a moon, and if he doesn’t make a kill soon, he will die._

_But hunger teaches patience. So the Smilodon waits._

_The Reindeer come through the pass, walking daintily over the loose stone. The stags first. The does will come with the fawns in some days. The stags are fiercer, but the young Smilodon is too hungry to wait any longer._

_He crouches. H >, his strong back legs behind him. He is not fast, nor <he can>can he run for long. If he scatters his prey without making a kill, he will lose them._

_The Smilodon prepares the roar that will paralyse the reindeer just enough, when a flashes of light comes from the other side of the canyon, followed by a second. The Reindeers scatter and <flew>run. Annoyed and hungry, the Smilodon jumps anyway, but his mighty outstretched paws miss the flesh of the stag passing by, leaving him with a pawful of dirt and pebbles._

_The sound of the stampede dies off, but the Smilodon doesn't notice it. The smell in the air is making him wild with hunger._

_Two reindeer have fallen on the ground, and one is lifeless already, a strange branch in its neck, the delicious blood seeping from the wound to make a pool in the ground. The other is kicking madly, a similar branch logged in its belly. It thrashes in the death throes, but the Smilodon knows it won't last long._

_The beast leaps over to the blood puddle and slurps with hunger, lapping at it eagerly. For a moment, it is too taken by the wonder of blood and food and life to understand. Then he feels it and freezes with his muzzle still in the ground. Something is behind him._

_He growls and turns. A strange creature stands before him. It is tall, but slim and puny, standing on two legs instead of four. A foreleg is bent, and a branch is held by a strange thing that the Smilodon doesn't understand. It has little fur, just a tuft on its head, and it is covered by strange stuff._

_A thought forms in two minds._

I'll kill you if I have to.

_The Smilodon blinks. The creature does the same. Then their eyes meet._

_The creatures eyes are strange, not yellow like his own, but a pale grey like the rocks. Yet there is something in them and in what is behind them that make the Smilodon think of the cave he was born in and his mothers rough tongue cleaning him and his sisters and of the warm milk and of hunting together with the females and of_ pride _._

_The Smilodon sits on the ground, holding the strange creature eyes. The creature lowers the branch._

_They stay like this for a long time, watching each other, as the cold wind owls around them._

____

_Vanyel eyes his supply of meat as he idly greases idly his seaxes. He eyes the blade with pride. His own work, and he is quite proud of them._

_Suns have risen and set, and Flint has not been back. The Seer is not bothered. He yawns and thinkslazily **.**_

_Then he raises his head sharply and smiles. Footsteps, almost hesitant, and the sound of something being dragged._

_He fastens the blades to his belt and crawls out the tent._

_The Wind has abated, perhaps weary of blowing, and it is midday, and what passes for warm in those place. Flint looks sheepishly at Vanyel, dragging the carcass of a reindeer with him. Vanyel smiles briefly at his Dhil'a and looks behind him. Even knowing, his eyes dilate a bit at the sight of the mighty predator. His hands go to the seaxes and his feet takes stance, moving away from the tent, to have the solid rock at his shoulder._

_The Smilodon stops dragging the reindeer and turns. He looks at Vanyel and growls. Before Flint can do anything, the animal  crouches and leaps._

_Flint shouts, the echo reverberating in the mountain, but Vanyel was already moving, and the jump brings the young beast against the rock with a solid thud. The two seaxes are in Vanyel's hands, and it is his turn to leap._

_The Seer is not young. Nor he is inexperienced. His blades slashes at the flanks of the Smilodon, the cut made for pain and dominance, not for death. The beast swirls on his feet and crouches again, watching Vanyel. The Seer stands, slim and slight and apparently weak, but his blades, crossed over his chest to protect both his venter and his neck, drip the Smilodon's blood. The beast shuffles his paws and sits. Vanyel lowers the blade. The Smilodon turns to watch his wounds and licks at them, then make a huffing sound._

_Vanyel smiles and turns toward Flint, who watches the scene paralysed by horror._

_"Don't worry, Dhil'a. Now we shall be well, your new companion and I." He says, indolently, already used above, and cleans the blade with a cloth. The Smilodon starts licking at his wound, pleased by the strength of his new pridemates._

_Flint falls to the ground and takes his head in his hands. Both the Seer and the Smilodon watch him, then each other. Vanyel starts laughing, his rare laugh and the Smilodon makes strange, huffing sounds._

_Flint shakes his head and adds his own, shaky laughter to the symphony._

____

_The steppes glistens under  the starlight. The shower before the sunset has drenched the tall grasses without touching the earth beneath them. The Mountains are young, and there are no hills, once mighty mountains, between the prairies and the mountains themselves._

_The little pride of three looks at the landscape, as stark in its life as the mountains are in their death. The Seer and the Smilodon look  at the tall grasses and at the few, sparse <s> trees. It is not light enough to see the animals that live there. Only the plants, immobile and waiting under the sky. The stars are immense, blinking and shining above, and their dim light is reflected on the wet grasses, as if there were a sky under them as well as one <up>above._

_Flint's eyes are turned toward their right._

_There, far away, are other flickering lights. They aren't stars, nor the reflection of stars. The light is livelier, and more controlled besides. They are people's light. Fires, in caves at the feet of the Mountains. He watches. They had travelled more than a year since they left the Ieldryr's city, to find them. For he knows in his very bones that they are the fire of his birth tribe._

_Flint swallows. Something touches his hand. He turns to see Vanyel's hand in his own, and Vanyel's grey eyes holding the softness that is for him alone. The Smilodon nudges his flank with his muzzle and a soft purr echoes in the night._

_Flint straightens his shoulders and bits his lips._


	9. Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> FANART! Yay! Thanks to Andromeda Aires who is an amazingly talented person! O_O No really look at it!

 

****

** Chapter Seven: Water **

 

 

_The Great Sail Fleet, called in Vietnamaran Lớn Buồm Hạm Dội, is the merchant fleet of Vietmar, and it belongs to the Crown. Its use is to travel and commerce with the Away Kingdoms, and to spread there the White Wisdom._

_Vietmar is the only country of Clerres that keeps such a Fleet. Malach, too, owns ships, but theirs are smaller vessels, fit to travel on the inner sea between Laich and Dushanbe or Jast Verim. Jast Verim itself is a dock, but it is for fishing only and sees no ships save their own and Laich's ones. No other White Country has a fleet, or indeed desires one._

_The Ships of the Great Sail Fleets are massive, generally measuring between 1100 and 1400 tons burthens, with usual measures being around 175 feet overall length of hull, 144 feet keel, 43 feet beam and 17 feet draft. They often can carry about 600 tons of supplies and goods._

_The number of Great Sail Ships that used to sail was fixed at ten, which is the Perfect Number, as everybody knows. They sailed from Dushanbe every five years, to come back after five, and as such the Wheel was completed. Rarely all the ships made back to the Docks, and it was not rare for two or three to be lost to the sea._

_The Sailors of the Great Sail Fleet used to be a breed apart. As Clerres doesn't have ships, neither does it needs sailors to man them, save in Vietmar. The Great Sail Sailors, called Lớn BuồmThủy, lived in Dushanbe in their own districts, passing their trade from parents to children, girls and boys alike, and took pride in it. They were a strange group. Promotion in the Great Sail Fleet has always been a matter of merit alone, and the children of Captains stood the same chances as children of simple hands to become Admiral of the Fleet. It was a self-contained world, not unlike one of their ships, with its own rules and laws and customs. They were, and are, employed by the Crown, and as such pay far less taxes and have their houses in Dushanbe for free, as long as they keep themselves ready to sail at any moment._

_I write in the past, for this too has changed after the arrival of King Xanhà Doi Chihn. Whilst the Fleet used to sail every five years, now they sail yearly or at most every two years. Whilst they used to follow always the same course, now they have several. Whilst the people to man them used to come entirely from the rank of people who had been sailors on the Great Sail Fleet for generations, now most are new people. The only thing that stays as it always had is the number of ships sailing in each fleet: ten of them. But whilst it used to be the complete number of the fleet, now there are, at the least reckoning, 76 ships of the Great Sail Fleet._

_Such an increase in number brought havoc over the orderly lives of the Lớn BuồmThủy. People of Clerres are reluctant to go over water, and we don't use our rivers to move goods, as other countries do. As such, in normal times, finding enough hands for all those ships would be impossible, as every ship carries between one hundred and fifty and two hundred of them. But those were not normal times. Refugees from Liantharin had poured in Vietmar, and several, having no other way to learn their bread, took to manning the new ships. As such the old Lớn BuồmThủy often found themselves in the position of petty officers, officers and captains, with green hands. But those new hands too learnt their new trade, and in no few cases took pride in it. Many married in Lớn BuồmThủy families and settled in the ancient life of the sailors of the Great Sail Fleet. Others left after having earned enough to start their old trade, whatever it was. Other still stayed for they had nowhere else to go._

_Some learnt too well that they rose in the ranks, and now some of the Great Sail Fleet’s Ships have a New Blood Captain, for New Blood is how the sailors who are not Lớn BuồmThủy are called._

_Among the ones who had been Lớn BuồmThủy for generations, the reaction to those changes had been mixed, at best. Some, mostly among the young ones, welcomed the change and the possibility of promotion. Others were so strongly resentful of it that left their ancestral trade altogether, and everything in between._

_Their thought on the Daman Vua are  strange, and are different from what the landlubbers as the ones who are not sailors are called have. It is well known among them that King Chihn came to Clerres as the Physick aboard the Future Pride, and that Admiral Jek, now in command of all the Fleet, came with him. They have suffered little from the Iduyans, and have no particular feeling about his defense of the Realm against their demons. Rather, it is Admiral Jek that is almost worshipped, a very strange thing, for she is as much a barbarian as he is, but she had made herself well loved and liked in an almost preternatural way, and so they like the King through her._

_The reasons for their adoration toward Admiral Jek are not clear. It may be their inborn fairness, for the Admiral in the Great Sail Fleet has to be the best of the captains of all the Ships, the captain has to be the best of the officers in his own, and the officers the best of the petty officers, and the petty officers the best of the hands, and Jek was all of that, they claim, and more. Or it may be that she used to sail over a Liveship, and the Lớn BuồmThủy reaction to such things which I am told exist indeed, and who am I to call my King a liar? is betwixt awe and disgust, but their reaction to one who has sailed them is pure awe because, they say, ships are hard enough to sail when they don't have a mind of their own._

_From the private journal of_

_Sun Tha Boi, Secretary of the Dockmaster of Dushanbe_

 

That night my friend's nightmare began to plague him.

I lay abed that morning, listening to the small sounds of the night, trying to gauge what had woken me. My eyes were open, studying the details of my darkened room before I realized that sleep had fled. I quested toward Snowcloud and gently brushed her sleeping thoughts. She dreamed of running over snow-smooth rolling hills with me. For her, it was a dream of silence, cold, and swiftness.Softly I withdrew my touch.

The old wood of the Inn creaked in the night and the hunting bats' wings wished outside the window. There was a light wind, and whenever it stirred the trees, they released a fresh shower of last night’s rain to patter on the wet sward. I blinked. None of this was remarkable or reason enough for waking as I had, sweating and shaking with my muscles clenched, and far less for the distant feeling of unrest that crept inside me like a vine creeps over a wall.

Then I heard a soft sound, between a sob and a sigh, and something kicked me behind the cover. I turned to watch my friend and knew the reason of my wakefulness.

He tossed and turned in his sleep, whimpering and pleading in words I couldn't make out. I reached with a hand for his shoulder, unthinking, to wake him and stop his pain.

As my hand touched his bare flesh, a startled cry died in his throat and his eyes flew open to look unseeing into mine. Something seared my mind like acid coursing through my ears, the crisping sounds of flame engulfed me, and my nostrils were filled with the acrid smell of burning paper. A flash of pain, deep as a Skill-headache, blinded me and my throat closed against the smoke.

I jumped away as scorched, coughing and choking at once.

When my eyes cleared I raised them to watch my friend. He sat still in the pale moonlight, a hunched form of black and white, his forehead resting on his raised knees. I could see the trembling in his slender body as he took great gulps of cool night air. The room was filled of the smell of fear and sweat, whether mine or his, I could not tell.

Shaken, I tried to still my quivering. I shook my head to clear it, a phantom of pain still lurking behind my eyes. I did not speak. The Fool lied still for a long time, and then he rose on his feet. I heard him stumbling in the dark to dress, without turning on the lamp. The door screeched when he closed it behind him.

I fell back on the covers, damp with our sweat, and looked at the unseen ceiling above me. I must have fallen asleep in some point in the night, for my next memory is the sunlight playing over my eyelids. I rolled over the bed and looked around. My friend was nowhere to be seen. I sighed, dressed and went downstairs.

I paid for some food to break our fast and for the midday meal, and for the use of two Road Horses until the next White Inn. We had planned to take two horses in the White Inn. Everybody with money can borrow horses thence, and give them back at another Dkar Mgron, and those are Road Horse, sturdy animals that can trot for a long way without tiring. I felt strange and sullen, my eyes sticky and my mouth dry. The morning was cool, as the mornings of the last stretch of the Rainy Season so often are, but I felt like a storm was going to break loose in me. I shook my head.

Snowcloud was stretching, dog fashion, in the stable, the back legs before and the front legs after, and yawning hugely, her mouth red against her now black fur. She cocked her head at me and lolled her tongue, but her mind made clear what she thought of my mood, and whatever she intended to humor me. I sighed. Of course she wouldn't. She tottered away from the bowls she had carefully emptied of meat and water.

I stepped out in the yard.

The day was cool and fresh, the smell of green things, clean straw and wet earth overpowering. The World seemed washed and fresh, every shade clear and striking, as a painting with the colours not yet dried. Yet the only thing it did to me was make me feel all the more estranged.

My friend, dressed as Auburn, was speaking with one of the stable hands, a lad of perhaps ten years. Auburn held the reign of a Road Horse, a dark chestnut animal with the stocky built and strong chest of its breed. The hand kept the reins of another one, of a darker, almost black hue. They stopped speaking as I came near. I put the food and water into the saddle bags and heaved over the saddle.

When I extended my Wit toward the horse, I found he was a sturdy gelding of perhaps ten years and a willing enough animal, in the way those rented horses often are. They are much like the laborers that are paid by day, as in they think of the human they carry as nothing more or less than a job to be done or, in some case, borne. They are rarely exceptional beasts, nor they have any will to please beyond the bases, but neither are they prone to prance or buck or unsaddle the rider. My mount had not the slightest interest on me, and simply moved his ears in acknowledgment of my presence when my mind brushed his. He felt not unlike Sooty, calm and placid if not loyal. His name, written in the stall, was Hau, brown. I almost smiled.

I turned my head and saw that Auburn too had taken her place over the second horse. She nodded at me and I nodded back. We took to the road.

Traveling with the Road Horses is the fastest way, but not always the most comfortable one. They can trot for hours at end, and trot is not the most comfortable of gaits. We went on in silence as the sun rose higher in the sky. I watched the canals as we went, sometimes stopping by the side of the road. I was pleased by what I saw. They were well tended and maintained, the beds and banks reinforced.

We stopped to eat at midday under a high durian tree. I divided the food in silence, and stood up to explore the canals on the side of the road while the horses grazed by. I was not hungry. I watched the water streaming by, the silver fishes, not bigger than one of my fingers, looking like flashes of light in the water. The new rice was being planted, and everywhere there were songs of labour, chanted to give the rhythm. I stopped under a khong tree, embraced to death by a strangling fig, to watch a line of planters, their feet in the shallow water and wide hats to protect them from the sun. I heard a gurgling sound and I turned, smiling, knowing already what I would see. A naked infant left in the cool shade whilst his mother worked, kicked his chubby feet at me and gurgled some more, smiling back with an almost toothless smile. I chuckled and walked back to my friends.

_Ah, you seem better now, brother mine._

I glanced at Snowcloud. She lolled her tongue at me and scratched one low-tipped ear.

italicsI can't say I dislike this colour, but I do feel more hot, Changer. italics

I looked at her. I was still thinking of canals and workers, so I was not as fast as I should have been. My companion jumped in the channel close to us, the sprays hitting both the Fool and me.

"Snowcloud!" My friend yelped. I chuckled. My wolf-dog climbed upon the bank and looked at us with the innocent eyes of the truly guilty dog, and, before I could move away, shook herself clear of water.

Then she marched on. I watched my friend. He had managed to jump away and avoid some of the spray. Some. Not much. He was looking in shock as his wet dress and the corners of his mouth were trembling. Then he threw back his head and laughed out loud. I smiled, and part of my restlessness left me.

We mounted again and took the road. We did not speak in the afternoon as well, but my mind was somewhat eased by our shared laugh. I kept my reconnaissance over the canals, and Snowcloud took another dip in the mid-afternoon. The road was well-tended and broad, and we met sometimes other travelers, alone or in group. Men with oxen wagons full of bags of goods, peddlers carrying their wares to smaller hamlets, riders coming to and from Seel. The day was hot and humid, but not unbearably so, and our charms protected us against the worst of the mosquitoes that swarm around, hungry for blood, their noise and their Wit-sense equally trying.

The sun was setting by the time we reached the second White Inn. Snowcloud ran toward the stable, the calling of clean straw for burrowing a den and fresh meat and cool water too sweet a song for my wolf-dog. I dismounted and groaned at the stiffness of my joints. Toiden had a better gait than the rented horse, fluider and less hard on the body. I could feel the beginnings of a stiffness. I sighed, regretting my forgetfulness in packing the massage oils. I was wondering if I could ask for simple cooking oil when my friend's hand on my forearm stopped me. I turned my head toward him.

"I have thought about the journey. It is two days on the White Road, but to reach Lụcngọc we would have to leave it the day after tomorrow. It would be perhaps four of five more before we approach the castle itself."

I nodded at him. I had had the same thoughts, but there was little I could do, so I had dismissed them. My friend glanced at me from the corner of his eyes, and spoke carefully as he did so.

"I think I could arrange a boat for us, between the next White Inn and Lụcngọc. It would be a day, perhaps two." He paused, his gloved fingers toying with the hem of his dress. I opened my mouth to speak, and then close it, slowly. I exhaled.

"That would be… convenient." I said, slowly. I could feel part of his tension ebbing away.

"Very well." He took the reins of my horse and turned toward the stable hands that were coming to relieve us of the animals. The beasts were tired, but satisfied and eager to rest in the stable. By tradition, they would have a day of rest before being rented again. I have often mused that a Road Horse of a White Inn could make all the way between Seel and Jast Verin or Nintes several times in his life.

I turned to go and rent a room, when my friend's voice stopped me. He spoke slowly, but resolutely.

"Fitz, rent two rooms for tonight."

I felt my aching muscles knotting. I did not turn to him. Perhaps I should have. He had excluded me. The heart knows but one reaction to that. I would now exclude him.

I went in and rent two rooms, trying to ignore the pangs of hurt and Snowcloud‘s belief that we were both hopeless puppies.

I slept badly that night, whatever for my own restlessness or the Fool's dreams I cannot tell. When I woke the sun had just started to rise beyond the horizon. I threw the pillow I had in my arms aside and stood up to wash and dress myself.

Another day passed, much as the previous one. We rented other two horses, not much different from the ones of the previous day. The day had the sparkling brilliance so common in the last time of the Rainy Seasons. I forced myself to eat a little in the morning. Snowcloud left us behind, going by her own path aside from the road, leaving me wondering if it was because she wished for speed or if it was that she couldn't bear our silences. I left the road a couple of times as well, to ride into the fields and gauge the canals. I didn't find anything worth of reproach, and in that at least I was satisfied. We didn't stop for lunch, but went on, eating on the saddle, with our mounts chewing from the nose-bags.

It was mid-afternoon when we rounded a cliff and the Aquamarine Gulf stretched at our left. With all my turmoil I couldn't avoid stopping the horse to admire it. The Aquamarine Gulf is the second gulf of Vietmar, the first one being the Dushanbe's one. It is called so because of the colour of its waters, a pure azure that reflect the sky. The shade is so bright because the sea is shallow and it is home of a strange kind of bluish seaweed, which is used for dye. Fishes of all kind swarm in the low water, which sparkles like a jewel under the sun, surrounded on all sides by the luscious green of the jungle and the shining gold of the sandy beaches. There are no villages, for the White Road runs next to the sea, and the rice fields are on the right, but there is a White Inn, nestling on a rocky outcrop that gives in a slow slope to a beach. The brackish smell of the ocean, the cry of gulls and seabirds and the sound of the waves have always had the power to soothe me, and I felt my muscles unknotting.

We dismounted in the yard. I tried to ignore the pang of pains that laced my back and legs. Whilst the one of the previous inn had been almost empty, this one hosted two carts, the kind that is pulled by oxen, full with barrels and caskets. No stable hands came out to greet us and relieve our horses. I could hear the sound of working inside, the sloshing of full buckets being carried to water the animals and the whishing of grains being thrown into troughs.

I turned toward the Fool, or Auburn. He was looking with a slight frown at the carts. He gestured at them with a slender hand.

"Great Fleet suppliers." He commented. I looked closer and nodded. Over the carts' flank there was stamped the symbol of the Great Fleet, a stylized ship. I looked closer to the caskets and barrels, trying to keep my horse from heading inside. Dried fish, probably, fished in Seel and directed to Dushanbe. The Great Sail Fleet was being manned for the voyage, and this was the road to take. I put a hand over my horse's nose to keep him still and nodded.

"Lets hope they have room for us." I reply.

_I wouldn't know, brother mine. Sloth mine, better._

I turned my head, searching for Snowcloud. I frowned.

_I can't see you, Sister._

_No? Strange, I am directly under your nose._

I ignored the smugness of her reply and looked closer at the carts. Under one of them a sparkle of blue eyes alerted me. I looked closer. Her black coat made her difficult to see between the growing shadows. She stretched and trotted toward us. The Fool smiled at her, the first smile I had seen in all the day, and scratched her between her ear.

I frowned and turned away. A ragged stable hand, a girl of perhaps thirteen years, ran out of the stable.

"I am sorry, sir. We have just one place for the horses, but we will house them well in the yard, sir." She said, breathless. Her rough clothes were wet and dirty with husk of grains and fragment of hay. I handed her the rein.

"It is not a problem. Those aren't our own horses, and I am sure you will take good care of them." The girl nodded. Auburn left her own horse with her and looked in dismay at the inn proper. Sounds of revelry came thence, music and boisterous laugh. I saw my friend wince. For all his love of acting and good food and elegant clothing and witty speech, he often desires solitude and quiet.

He sighed, threw a glance at me and headed toward the beach. I watched him. The sun would be other two hours in setting. It was the time of amber light, when everything seemed to be bathed in gold. He walked gracefully down the path on the cliff, and his tarnished bronze looked good against the sparkling gold of the beach and the sun, and the shining blue of the sea and the sky.

_If you would stop gawking at your mate, brother mine, I  am hungry._

I sighed.

_He is not my mate._

_So you say. I am still hungry._

I groaned and entered the White Inn.

The noise hit me like a mallet. I blinked. Several people, men and women, were seated in the tables, talking boisterously in the way of sailors when they went ashore. They shook their mugs and, if my experience was something to go by, would dearly love to be able to drink beer or wine. I stood on the threshold and looked around. The White Inn was a small establishment, as those go, and full besides. There were at least fifteen people inside, all that the small common room would hold. Two young monks scuttled around, carrying plates of boiled rice and grilled fishes, with crispy skins and white flesh. I made my way toward the counter. The head monk was a middle aged fellow, neither fat or slim nor tall or short. He was busy partitioning rice from a great boiler. I nodded at him.

"May the Future bring you peace." I had almost to shout to be heard. "I wish for three dinners, and two rooms, and for my hound to have a place in the stable."

The man stopped his work and wiped his forehead with his sleeves.

"I can give you food and a place in the stable, if your hound doesn't mind sharing with the oxen, but I have only one room left." I frowned then shrugged. Well, the Fool would have to accept that.

I took three bowls of white rice and fish, and a pitcher of ginger water. I was loading them on a tray when the monk spoke to me again.

"Are you with Lady Auburn, perchance?"

The surprise must have been evident in my face, for he smiled at me, his flat cheeks rounding as he did so.

"A fellow came this afternoon with a message for Lady Auburn." I nodded then, still dumbfounded.

"She is my wife." I said, before thinking. The monk gave me a sharp glance, perhaps surprise for my ask for two rooms I thought ruefully. Well, no chance of taking it back now. He handed me a rolled scroll, sealed with simple wax. I toyed with it for a second, put it in the tray and headed outside.

The fresh air and the silence, interrupted only by wind and waves and seabirds was a welcome change from the clutter and noisiness of the room. I walked down the path, mindful of the tray.

My friend was sitting on a boulder, his knees drawn up to his chest, his hands woven over them and supporting his pointed chin. Snowcloud was dozing at his feet. He turned at my approach. I put the tray over the boulder and gave Snowcloud her ration. She jumped up and dove in, wolf-way. I took my own bowl and chopsticks.

_What a strange way of eating. I shall never understand humans, brother mine._

I snorted at her.

 _Sometimes I wonder if you bonded me because you found me amusing._ I retorted, glancing down. She glanced up, mischief in her eyes.

_Of course I did! What better reason?_

I shook my head. I sat over the builder, facing the ocean. The sun would set at our right, and for now its rays still glanced off the horizon. The water looked endless and peaceful, marred only on the beach by small, frothy waves.

"There is only one room empty." I informed my friend's profile. "And I told the innmonk that we were married. We will have to share."

He nodded and said nothing. He played with his food, more than eating it. In the end, he lowered the bowl over his crossed legs and sighed.

"I can't make head nor tail of it." He shook his head, his long, sleek hair dancing. "I can't see anything, and the fire…"

I felt something inside me give away at his words. I took a deep breath. "Why would paper burning be such a terrible thing?" I asked him, curious myself.

He frowned. "Paper?"

I glanced back, surprised. "Yes, paper. I… shared part of it yester morning. When I touched you." I admitted, diffidently. "I did not do it on purpose. The smell was burnt paper."

He blinked slowly and nodded. "Now that you mention it… yes. Paper burning, and invisible men. Why would it be so horrible, though, I can't say. I can't see."

I drank a bit of ginger water, and gave some to Snowcloud in her now clean empty bowl. She lapped it up.

"It is the worst of it. I can't see. I don't understand." He added, plaintively. "I have my sight. I espy a place beyond which all is black. Blackness. And when I deliberately sit down and try to reach forward, to see where my path might go, that is what I see. Blackness.”

I did not know what to say. Would it always so between us, that I wished for him to speak only to find myself once he had done so that I wished he hadn't?

"But you don't feel only blackness." My voice was out of myself before I could stop, or check it. He blinked and glanced at me with the corner of his eyes.

"There was fire, paper burning, and somebody. You couldn't see them, but it doesn't mean they weren't here." I pointed at him.

He nodded, slowly, and frowned. "Not something black then. Something… Hidden."

I nodded back. "It makes sense. We know that it is probably a hidden ploy by Kuan, to disown you as true White Prophet and as such disregard your ruling on the matter of his right to reign." I frowned. "Perhaps he is the invisible man." I added, but I could hear the doubt in my voice.

As I spoke, my friend had one of the most strange expressions I have ever seen on him. He looked at me almost with marvel, shock and a sort of wry amusement warring in his gaze. He looked away from me. When his eyes came back to mine, he changed his expression, and the dry amusement won in them. He shook his head slowly and exhaled. I looked at him perplexed. What was it, now?

"It could be true. But then, wouldn't it mean that the Pale Woman was the true Prophet? From what have you said to me, I doubt Kaan would have accepted this." Again, his gaze escaped my own, as he turned east, toward the night and our goal.

I had not thought of it. I frowned. "Perhaps they think neither of you is the true Prophet of this age." I pointed, though the doubt was plain in my voice to hear. Then I sighed and stood up, wincing in pain.

"We shall know soon enough, I guess. Are you coming?" I asked. He shook his head. "I'll think a bit more."

_And I think I'll sleep here. I do not cherish the idea of sharing my den with oxen. Oxen!_

I chuckled at Snowcloud's indignation and nodded back. As I was about to turn and go to the room, thinking of a warm bath and oil to ease my muscles, I suddenly recalled something. I handed to my friend the rolled up scroll, forgotten in the half-darkness over the tray.

"The monk gave me this. For Lady Auburn." I explained. He broke the sigil and squinted to read it in the rapidly fading light, then nodded.

"It is from our boat. They will take us tomorrow morning, on the rocky outcrop an hour down the beach." He pointed with his chin toward the beach on the other side of the Inn. I was about to ask if they would be other fishermen, and how had he known of them, when I checked myself and nodded.

"Very well."

 I turned made my way to the White Inn, feeling better than I had in days in spite of the pain of my muscles.

In the end I managed a warm bath and to weasel some oil from the cook. I was oiling my calf, gritting my teeth against the pain, when my friend came back. He glanced at me and understood immediately.

"Lie back." He ordered me. I obeyed, gratefully. I was clothed only in the loincloth that in Vietmar is called “fun-oshi”. My friend dropped to his knees. He took some salve and began working on my right leg. This time, it didn't feel wrong. I could only feel grateful for his help in relieving the pain. I closed my eyes and relaxed some more as he worked steadily on. I tried to send him my feeling, my thankfulness, and the slender, cool hands on my legs stopped a second in their work.

"It is nothing, Dhil'a." He said, softly in the darkness, punctuated only by the lamp. My throat constricted. It was the first time he had called me in the ancient way, I realised abruptly. I blinked back tears and let out a ragged breath.

_Awwww. You are as adorable as blind puppies learning to walk._

I groaned.

 _Yes?_ The smugness was almost palpable in her mind touch.

I debated swiftly wondering whether saying something to her would improve or change anything, and decided against it.

 _You are getting wise, brother mine… very…. wise…_ I could feel her falling asleep and I chuckled.

 My Keppet chuckled back at me. I wondered if he had too heard of Snowcloud's remark. I decided not to probe the matter. Snowcloud was right, perhaps.  I was indeed getting wiser.

Outside, the rain had started falling, a curtain of water that cut out all the sounds. Even the revelry of the common room had stopped. I closed my eyes as my friend's skilled hands massaged away the pain.

I fell asleep.

 

 

 

**FITZ AS KING CHINH AND SNOWCLOUD BY THE AMAZING[ANDROMEDA AIRES](http://www.deviantart.com/art/CoR-Xhanha-Doi-Chihn-and-Snowcloud-467483652)! **

 


	10. Charms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> FANART! Yay! Thanks to Andromeda Aires who is an amazingly talented person! O_O No really look at it!
> 
> This weeks there are going to be TWO chapters! Next chapters Sunday evening (Italian time :P)

 

 

 

** Chapter Eight: Charms **

 

 

_As everybody knows, each country of Clerres is embodied by a precious stone mounted in flint, and the corresponding colour that goes with that gem._

_Most people in our White Land display openly and indeed proudly their country affiliations in their clothing or in their jewelry. A few countries make it a law, notably Dhevron and some of the city-states of Atremandia, which force their people to wear the colour of their home state on pain of various felonies._

_People of Dhevron would wear either the colour red or rubies, whilst Liantharinan prefers green and emeralds and Uzkabatan's violet amethysts. In this last country, by law, only women can wear amethysts, men being confined to the colour alone, without jewelry. Thantres' symbol is blue and sapphire, Kizah is all the shade of grey until their national black onyx, while Vietmar is yellow and amber._

_Behit, Atremandia and Malach are peculiar._

_As Behit's stone is the diamond, it is, by definition,colourless. Still, the colour white is sacred prerogative of the Prophet, and the Law of all Clerres forbids upon pain of death for any but the White Prophet to wear it. As such, people of Behit prefer veils, either covering their faces or adorning their heavy clothes._

_Atremandia has no single colour, but rather as many as the city-states that makes it. However, all of those are striated colouring, recalling their sacred jasper. As such, a man or woman hailing from JastLoyr will don a cloth of brown fabric, veined with red, whilst one from JastDrann will don an attire of green, dappled with yellow._

_Malach's own jewel is the pearl. They can't, however, don white more than Behitian's can, and indeed probably less, as Behit is as everybody knows the spiritual center of Clerres. As such, their national fabric tends to remind of mother of pearl, and their watered silks and cottons are the best of all of Clerres, and therefore of the World._

_Of course, no other Barbarian land has anything as such. I have been told that some far-away kingdoms have family colours, but that is not at all in the same degree of sophistication we have in our White Land. It is simply a reflection of whatever household is the current royal one, whilst for us the colour and jewel belongs to the country itself and its people, not to any particular house. Indeed, would the ruling house change, as it happens quite commonly on both Dhevron and several of Atremandia's cities, the colour would stay the very same._

_The same can be said for symbols. Being barbarians, they use crude emblems.While we prefer the sophisticate beauty of precious stones and complicated jewelry, they commonly make use of several beasts that should represent some sort of virtue, or at least so I am told._

_However, we should not fault the Barbarians for their lack of beauty. They simply have not had the honour of being part of the White Wisdom. As we all know, the White Prophets have changed Clerres into the perfect land, the only one worthy of them. Barbarian countries have not been properly molded, and as such not much should be expected of them._

_ThunJast-Mirar, scribe of JastMirar_

_"Colours and Symbols of Clerres"_

 

 

We landed close to the Lụcngọc Castle in the morning, after a whole day and night on a small boat. The sailors that manned it had taken pains to make it look like a simple fishing vessel, but the lack of smell and the pristine state of their nets told another story. As I stepped in, I glanced at my friend and wondered how he had made friends with smugglers.

Smuggling is an ancient and honoured profession in this part of Vietmar. The Great Sail Fleets dock in Dushanbe, and there the goods are weighted and taxed. Nowhere else can the great ships find adequate anchorage. Still, this doesn't stop crafty captains from launching small boats loaded with goods on Vietmar's shores. I decided to ignore the evidence in front of me, and thanked the Captain from having left behind his fishing to help us reaching Lụcngọc. We exchanged pleasantries, and I did not speak anymore till we landed.

As my Fool saluted his acquaintances, I studied the beach and what lay beyond it. It was a sloping, sandy beach overlooking a cliff. The night shower had darkened the pale sand to a mellow brown, and the grass beyond was the luscious green of the Rainy Season. Snowcloud was already there, turning and twisting over the damp grasses and yelping in delight. I smiled. After the stripe of grass laid a field of hemp, and beyond that a small but well kept road sneaked up the cliff. I shaded my eyes and looked up.

Lụcngọc Castle had been erected when piracy in the Aquamarine Gulf was plentiful, and the Ly family had enjoyed prosperity and honour as the head of a fleet devoted to their destruction. For centuries the Lụcngọc Castle had stood like a beacon for the Great Sail Ships, and their vessels had protected them from any harm. They had been victims of their own success. Piracy had declined until it had been naught but a story told to children about bygone times, and with the departing of their enemies the reason for the fighting fleet waned and disappeared. Lụcngọc Castle still stood on the cliff, forlorn and forgotten by all, too far away from the White Roads even to have any commercial importance. There still should be a wharf on the other side of the crag, though I doubted it was kept well enough to accept even a fishing boat. It was hard to gauge the state of repair from what we could see. It was a big castle, made of the same black rock of the cliff, and walled against invasion. A fortress. It reminded me of Buckkeep.

I heard the sound of rowing and looked back in time to see the smuggling boat retreat. My friend walked toward me, grimacing as the cold water splashed around him.

"You have some interesting friends." I remarked. He shrugged.

"You meet all sorts of people around Clerres." He shaded his eyes with a gloved hand, looking around as I had done. I glanced at him. He had slept poorly those two nights, and his narrow face was lined with fatigue. He was dressed as Auburn, with traveling clothes of sturdy hemp, brown and violet. Amethysts were dangling from his ears.

He nodded toward a small path. "Have you any idea about how we will present ourselves to the people of the Castle?" He inquired as we started to walk. Snowcloud, considerably cleaner, fell in step with us.

"I think a bold tale is the best of them. To enter and tell all we have what the shaman had left behind. I could spin a tale that it left such to us before dying." I replied, slowly, eyeing the cultivation. The hemp came to my waist, still a couple of months before harvesting. Hemp is a profitable crop, used for the seed oil and for the sturdy fibers, and good for terrains that don't yield enough rice.

My friend frowned, adjusting his pack over his shoulder.

"You want to pretend we are on their side." It wasn't a question, but I nodded.

"Yes. They will be wary, but they won't hide what they think we already know." He nodded slowly.

"Bold. But for its boldness it could work. I'll say I am a wandering artists and your wife. We happened to have been in Fisil when the Shaman tried to reach for safety." He seemed lost in his own thought. I glanced at him, but he didn't speak anymore.

 I looked at the canals and frowned. They were well kept and repaired, better even than the ones close to Seel. I shook my head and walked on.

We trudged up the hemp-covered slope, careful about the small plants, till we arrived at the road. Beyond, the ground grew neat fields of rice and vegetables. We were on one of two roads that departed from the Lụcngọc Castle. The first headed toward Thang Long, if my memory served me well. The second toward Siamoar.

Siamoar used to be a secondary city of Liantharin, as all cities not blessed by a White Road tend to be. But ever since Emperor Cong took his granddaughter with him and fled in the Nord, toward Deviar, it had been Kuan's Capital. In more peaceful time, the connection between Lụcngọc Castle and Siamoar wouldn’t be worth thinking about, but now I couldn't help but wonder about the direct route between the Castle and Kuan's court. I shook my head. A convenient place, indeed.

The road was slightly shaded by palms and trees, but not so much as to hide whoever walked on it from the Castle's eyes. In accord, my friend and I started walking. Something was nagging at me. It was almost the irritating sensation of knowing one had forgotten something, but was unable to recall what.

The closer we came to the Castle, the stronger the sensation became. I studied it. Once it had been massive, perhaps as big as my Amber Castle. The black stones had withstood the fury of wind and waves and of men's cunning. But now it was a ruin, a pitiful memory of the pride of time bygones. Some walls had crumpled, leaving wide breaches in the defenses.  The tower that was once the beacon of the Aquamarine Sea had lost all of the upper stories, and half a room with a floor but no roof was open to the element. Moss and grasses flourished among the crannies, unchecked. The broken stone lay on the ground where they had fallen. The gates were open, a mockery with all the rents in the walls. The two roads forked from the gates themselves, making different paths. I stopped perhaps three hundred feet from the gates, and looked in front of me. If somebody at all lived in the Castle we must have been sighted. Somebody would come to gauge who we were, and why we were here. Best course was waiting there. I doubted it would be long.

The nagging feeling had grown worse, not better. I shook my head. It was full morn, the light of the sun was strong and merciless. The rice fields on our right sparkled, azure and pale green.

My friend shook his head. "It is strange." His feeling echoed mine. I stood still and watched.

Snowcloud scratched her head and yawned.

_I am hungry. I am going a-hunting, brother mine._

I eyed her. We had not yet broken our fast, and we had eaten the last provision on the boat the night before. I was not hungry, but I wondered if the Fool was. I eyed him, but he was studying the Castle and, if he felt hunger, he didn't show it.

_Be safe, sister._

She lolled her tongue at me.

_Am I ever?_

She trotted back toward the hemp field. There would be hares there, and several kinds of fat rodents.  I watched her till she disappeared.

"It is strange." My friend repeated, his voice echoing my doubts. Yet I knew not what was strange about it.

I was about to answer when the sound of galloping horses cut our words short. We hurried to the side of the road.

Three people mounted over Road Horses busted out of the open gates, taking the road to Siamoar. They were dressed in plain clothes, and their tack was of the common sort, but their horses were prime beasts, sleek and fine and fast. I looked at them, and met the eyes of Ghuozi.

The boy has grown in the moons that had passed since his almost death. His face was slimer, his features stronger. He rode with determination and ability. As his eyes meet mine, even with all the space between us, I was sure he had recognized me as I had recognized him, and braced for his turning the horses around, and the interrogation to come.

It didn't happen. Suen Ghuozi turned his head toward the road, and galloped on with his companions. I was left on the other road, bewildered.

I turned toward my friend who was looking at the gates still.

"That was Ghuozi." A shadow of alarm flickered over his face.

He glanced at the road. "Did he recognize you?"

I shook my head, slowly. "I… No. I don't think so." If he had, why hadn't he turned around to face me?

He was about to speak to me when somebody else came out of the gates, and walked toward us. We both looked at the figure. It was a woman, of perhaps thirty years. She was strongly built, long-boned and muscled, yet still womanly in form. Her shoulders were wide and her bare arms wiry and strong. Her black hair was sun-streaked with a soft brown. Sun had browned her face and hands. She had a narrow nose above a strong mouth and determined chin. Her high cheekbones and slanted black eyes spoke of a northern ancestry. Behit, perhaps, or North Liantharin.  She wore a hemp dress, not unlike the one of Auburn, but she carried a short seax at her hip. I eyed it, because carrying weapons is still very strange in Eastern Clerres, but I said nothing.

"I am Altanjin of the Castle." She said, without preamble. "Who walks today?"

Her voice had a strong inflection and I blinked, because Altanjin is aIduyan's name.

"I am Auburn of Dothi'Ca'Chihn, an artisan and carver of wood. He is my husband, Kep, a warrior from the Away Kingdoms. We had come hoping for some nights rest. I have wares to trade, and hope to make my way to Siamoar." My friend's voice was so genteelly modulated, her accent so pure, that no one could have doubted that Auburn was a woman of status and culture. I blinked. We had not talked about Kep's origin, but her words made sense. There was no White Road to Siamoar, and traveling without protection on Liantharin, even over the Dkar Lam, was a dangerous business. With my war axe and build, I could very well provide protection to my wife. I bowed slightly to Altanjin.

"Well met." I said, courteously.

The woman looked from one to the other of us, and nodded.

"We have guests in this time. You can stay tonight." I could see she was not happy of the arrangement, but she couldn't turn us out, for such a deed would sure elicit talks. I decided to be bold. I locked eyes with her and spoke quietly.

"We have tidings from the Idu'ian on the Island." I spoke softly, using the inflection of the word Iduyan that it is used in their language.

Altanjin didn't gasp, but looked at me sharply. I looked back at her, and allowed sorrow to come into my gaze. She glanced back at Auburn. My friend's eyes were warm and sad. He had always been a masterful actor, but I doubted it was only acting on his part. Her eyes mellowed and she nodded, slowly.

"We have heard of it." She paused and glanced around. There was nobody in sight, the only life abroad the one of the birds in the sky and the beast of the earth.

"Come, and be welcome. You can have a room, and water and food."

We nodded and followed her as she came back into the Castle. I felt at once relieved and tense. We had passed the first test. I did not know if we would pass others.

We passed a wide wall and entered the Castle proper.

The inner court was well kept, with kennels at our left and a stable at our right. The beasts inside were well fed and in high spirits, mostly. Children and people milled around, working around the beasts or going about their business. A farrier was busy around the feet of a horse. Children pushed wheelbarrows of hay or sack of rice. Some women were washing linen, talking all the way, on a big washing basin made of stone, so great that it held three of the stout women for each side. Poultry was everywhere, more often than not underfoot. The smell of food came from a big annex, and its open door showed the great boilers where rice was cooked, people coming to and fro in their smallclothes from the heat that the cooking generated. The monotonous click-clack of looms made a counterpoint to the uneven clangs of the blacksmith's forge.

 I blinked. I had not expected this many people. Many turned to us when we walked, but Altanjin's presence seemed to reassure them, and they went back to their jobs. Laughs and cheers erupted at least twice as we made our way to the main building.

I bit my lips. Chyne had spoken of a barely habitable manor, with only two elderly couples as servants. But now I was seeing a thriving Castle. I shook my head, and wondered.

The manor itself was clean and well kept. The floors were of wood and if they were not polished with beeswax as in my castles, they were swept and clean. So were the walls, and lamps were lighted at regular intervals. I frowned some more.

Altanjin brought us to a wing for guests. The room was as neat and clean as everything else I had seen, and the window opened towards the sea. It had a low bed, of the kind preferred in Clerres, a basin for bathing, a chest, and a low table. It had no fireplace, but the table was of the kind that had an oven with embers built inside.

The window was open, and the sunlight and brackish smell of the sea carried inside with the cries of the gulls.

Auburn turned toward Altanjin and nodded.

"Thank you. Could we have some food? We had not eaten today." There was apology in her tone. The Iduyan nodded and smiled a slow, pained smile.

"You must have made charmspeed to come here so soon. We had known of Orus' death, and we had feared…" She checked her words. Orus. The Shaman I had killed was named Orus. Why is that knowing the name of a killed enemy always make the death heavier?

"I won't ask you to tell the tale twice. There is going to be a dinner this evening: Captain OlyubenTha Chai is here, and my, doesn't he know how to tell a tale." She smiled a little more. "Pity that Ghuozi had already left without the news, but he will be back soon and, Ancestor's Willing, with He Who Rides Alone with him."

I had no idea of what she was talking about, so I nodded.

"We shall speak with him, and tell him what we know." My friend promised for me. Altanjin nodded once more, and left.

 I let my backpack fall and stretched my back. My friend, always tidier than me, left his own on the low table. I walked toward the window.

The sea stretched endlessly in front of me. I quested for Snowcloud. She had eaten and was willing the heat away, snoozing under a bush. Her mind touch was more sleepy than asleep. I smiled. I would find a way to bring her inside the Castle in the afternoon, I decided.

The window overlooked a dock. I looked down. A ship, a great vessel, was there. The dock was as well kept as all the inside castle, and I could see the bustling of activity. Altanjin had spoken of a Captain, I recalled. OlyubenTha Chai. I had already heard the name, but where?

My friend’s sigh echoed in the room. I turned my head.

He sat on the bed, his legs crossed and looking toward the bare wall. He did not turn to me. "The Castle is made to look more in ruin than it is." He said, in the end, casting a glance in my direction.

I nodded. That had been what had bothered me from the beginning. "Yes." I agreed. "It would be easy to make it look like a complete ruin. Throw some dirt around, nobody but some elderly servants to work, perhaps even some carefully placed worn furniture. With only a couple of days of work, this place would look as it was all but abandoned." I paused. "As Chyne saw it."

My friend rummaged in his pack, taking out a brush. His backpack was almost twice my own, but then again he had always been fussier about his appearance than me, given the chance.  He was about to speak when somebody knocked at the door. A lad of perhaps thirteen years entered, followed by three others bearing buckets of both hot and cold water. I watched the children. They were half-grown, dressed with sturdy if humble clothes and well fed. Two of them had the eyes and features that recalled Liantharin, but another, and the older one who had opened the door, had the high cheekbones and the slanted eyes of the Iduyans. The serving boys didn't speak, but hastened efficiently to their job. The older lad waited by, casting furtive glances at us. He lagged behind, and when the others had gone, he turned to us abruptly.

"I heard you came from Fisil. Did you hear of Quy?" The Fool and I exchanged a glance. Then my friend spoke with the cultured voice of Auburn.

"Yes. We had become friends, the little lady and I. I left my cat to her care."

The boy nodded slowly, looking at us eagerly. I watched him. He was dressed in a weird mixture of Iduyan's fur and Vietmaran's hemp, and his dark brown eyes had a strange, far-away look, a sort of measured sadness that never left them.

"She was better and had started speaking again, if only a little." I added. "She was the one who told us to bring the Shaman's possession here, if we could." I lied. Even if it was, perhaps, more of a stretching of the truth than an outright lie.

The boy looked at us and nodded slowly.

"I am Batudai of…" A flash of pain darkened the youth featured. "Batudai of no tribe. Can I see what the Shaman had with him? I am a shaman in training myself." He added, straightening himself in all his five feet of height. I exchanged another glance with Auburn. My friend nodded an assent.

I went toward my backpack, where I had put the broken charms the Shaman had stolen from the White's City. I was curious of what this little Shaman in training would make of them. I took out a pouch of leather and slowly opened it. It held pieces and fragments of White charms, their power sapped by the ages. Charm magic is not one that speaks to me. I knew not what power, if any, those crystal beads and frayed strings still had. So I watched the lad.

His brown eyes widened and glistened. Reverently, he reached with a trembling hand to touch one of the beads. He shook his head in marvel.

"Such mastery." He said, his still immature voice full of awe.

My friend's gaze was fixed on the boy, as well. "I know little of Charms' magic, only that it works by attraction or repulsion." Auburn commented. I lifted my head sharply and glanced at her. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back straight and her sleek hair unbound, the amethyst in her ears shining in the late morning light. "But those seem ancient to me."

Batudai nodded, his gaze fixed over the broken string of leather and the scattered beads. "Yes. Very much so.Temu and the other Shamans' hoped that by going there they could learn more about how to make charms to better keep the Black Death away. We have already made many, you understand, but it is not an easy task, and we have other things to do, too." His gaze dropped to the floor, and his whole face tightened in pain.

I frowned. "The Black Death?" I asked, before I could check myself. I ignored the sharp glance of warning from my friend. It was a fine line, between pretending knowledge we didn't have and giving ourselves away, that I knew well. But something in this boy's mien and in the ice in my heart told me it was a question that needed to be answered.

The boy lifted his eyes at us, bleakly. In our silence, his next words were as loud as a shout. 

"The Black Death killed all my tribe. And many others. He Who Rides Alone called it adrak'kon. He called it Icefyre."

 

 

 

**CHYNE AND CHANANG by the Incredibly Talented[Andromeda Aires! Go see her DeviantArt](http://www.deviantart.com/art/CoR-Chyne-and-Chanang-467486508)!**

****


	11. Ember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> As promised the second chapter of the week! :D

 

 

 

** Chapter Nine: Ember **

 

_From Logic, called Gic, of Buckkeep to his master and teacher, Mishap, called Hap, of Buckkeep._

_I am glad you are well, and so are your children. I had been worried about your lungs; you really shouldn’t have gone out in the winter to sing and carouse, old man. You are right to berate me from not having been back to Buckkeep in those last six months, but I have been busy spreading my tales far and wide in the Duchies. I am sure you understand._

_You ask me why I went. It is hard to say. Since the opening of the commerce with the White Land our country has learnt more about Clerres. For a long time, their Great Sail Fleet reached only Jamailia, and we had none or very little knowledge of them. They seemed to prefer this way, as well, for they didn't try to contact us, simply selling and buying goods. They also never attempted other docks or harbours, preferring the one they knew well and where they were mostly left alone._

_As you know, this changed recently. Their great, magnificent ships have reached other docks, in Chalced and the Pirate Islands and other lands, though not in our Seven Duchies yet. Also, and this is more, they have proved to be less reluctant to talk and share their custom and habits._

_So it was that I, Minstrel Logic, called Gic of Buckkeep, chose to leave the shore of my land to try to speak with some sailors of the great Sail Fleet, to learn from them what I could._

_It was a long journey indeed, for they still come mostly toJamailia. Yet, the ships that dock hence are the ones with the most stiff captains and crews, and who are less likely to accept questions and trade stories.  Such was not what I wished. So I made my way to the sparkling Pirate Islands, where King Paragon reigns with his beautiful queen and three lusty sons.  It was a difficult travel, fraught of danger both in sea, where we were attacked by sea serpents, and by land, where we found the strange islands to be as different as Clerres probably is. But those are tales for another day, possibly one with a pint of beer and a cheery fire, and no minstrel worth its salt will tell all his stories in one sitting, lest his public get bored and stiff. I have sung those tales in the Dukes’ own halls, and even Duke Sacrifice Cunning gave me a bucketful of gold for my telling of the story of the Sea Serpent, and told me it was a very good one. You should have heard him, and Duchess Ulai and the little lord Aslejval, Hap! It was one of the best moments of my life._

_Suffice to say that, in the end, I came to the Pirate Islands. There was no fleet then, and I resolved myself to wait. I had not expected such a good luck as to find them at my coming. I travelled those islands, by feet and by ship, singing my songs and learning theirs, and sometimes sleeping in the high cabins in lordly ships and sometimes running from dogs set loose on me. I feasted in the King’s Hall and begged in the Once-King Wintrow’smonastery.  Truly, the three years I spent there were worth the time, even if I never set eye, let alone foot, on a Great Sail Ship._

_But in the end they came._

_It was the strangest and most awesome of sights. They are nothing like Bingtown’sliveships: they aren’t alive by themselves, yet their simple size dwarfs every other ship in the dock like a swan dwarfs a duck. I watched their sails, as wide and white as the clouds above, and knew why it is called the Great Sail Fleet._

_I manage to find myself in the proximity of their sailors and general crew. It took me several weeks, but in the end I learnt much of their habits and customs._

_They come from a land that is made of several, and very diverse, countries. Their own, if I write it well, is called “Vitmar”. There are eight others, and each with a different set of rules and kings and queens, and some have only one or two of those besides. Yet they are made one single land by their philosophy of the White Prophet. This is a strange creature, who is apparently able to see the different futures and is able to somehow set the course to get in one of them, but I admit I haven’t understood much, for their philosophy has no rhyme or reason, Hap._

_Apparently this one White person has got the right to decide the fate of the entire World, just because. When I asked the people why should they thrust the word of a single one, because the White would make a better World for whom, precisely? And people lie all the time. This White one may lie, as well, for whatever reason. Then they looked at each other and said it was the White Prophet, and then looked at me like I was mad, or worse. There was something in their eyes that told me to buy everybody a round of drink and don’t ask more questions. I bought two rounds of drinks, but you know how good I am at not asking questions._

_It gets even stranger. The base of their philosophy is that everybody can change the World, which is laudable. But then the second tenet is that only the Prophet and a Catalyst (which is stranger stuff still, and I haven’t really understood it) can change the World. How can both be possible? It is either one or the other._

_Really, it was a mishmash of different ideas without any logic whatever, and you know me, with all the jest you have always made at my expense, I am Logic by name and by deed, and proud of it. It is a wonder that a whole land has fallen into believing such a hog nosh of nonsense. It looks like these Whites are probably people with some degree of foreseeing ability, like our Kings and Queens have the Skill or other people have the Wit or ability with the charms, and have made people believe they have some sort of inherent right to decide for the entire World._

_Pretty arrogant, if you ask me. But then again, it is their philosophy and the sailors I met were decent enough fellows._

_I’ll be back at Buckkeep next winter. Kiss little Tom for me, I’ll bring your son a detailed account of my travels. You should have called him Logic as well – that child shows promise._

_Faithfully yours_

_Logic, called Gic, of Buckkeep, Minstrel and Truesinger_

 

 

We did not speak of what Batudai had told us. I wouldn't have known what to say. I did not know what we had expected, but this was not it. Truthfully, even would I have been inclined to speak with my Keppet, he was not inclined to speak to me. He bathed first and then, as I took my own bath, left the room. When I took away the screen after dressing, I found myself alone. I sighed and looked at the food left on the table. I was not hungry, but I took some buns and ate desultorily. I respected my Dhil'a’s decision, but I wondered for how long we could avoid confronting what Batudai had unwittingly told us.

_Changer, brother mine, come. There is something you must see._

Snowcloud's mind touch alerted me. I spun toward the windows. It was midday, and the sun was at its peak. It was not as hot as it would be during the Dry Season, when everybody sleeps the first time after noon away, but neither was it cool. I quested toward my companion, and my fear must have been plain, because her next thought were tinged with amused reassurance.

_I am well. But strange things are afoot. Come._

I frowned and hesitated. I was torn. This place was not safe for my Keppet, that much was clear. If by any chance they learned who he was, I doubted not that his life would be in jeopardy. Still, Snowcloud had asked for me.

I bit my lips and quested toward the Fool. Eerie and strange as our bond was, I had grown used to it. I couldn't gauge his feelings, for he either hid them or they were still too odd to my own experience, but I could perceive if he was well or not. I frowned some more. The bond felt like a jarred jumbled of sounds, discordant and pained at once. But he was not physically unwell. I felt his awareness of me, and my perception faded away. I sighed once more and shook my head.

Still, he was in no immediate danger, and if he preferred to be alone, so be it.

_I am coming, Sister._

I walked out of the room and tried my luck to find the courtyard by myself. All the buildings of Vietmar follow the same basic pattern, so it was not as hard as it would have been in the beginning of my stay there. I emerged in the open and blinked the sun away from my eyes. Life was ripe everywhere. Children were playing with the water in a horse trough, shouting at each other. Dogs napped in the shadow of their kennel, lazily swatting away flies. Most of the adults were inside, resting, but from the kitchen came the sound of bustling, likely preparing for the dinner. My eyes rested on the horses. I walked closer to the stable.

They were fine animals, not as fine as the ones in my stable, but finer than any found in a White Inn. There were Road Horses as expected, but among them there were the small, hardy ponies that the Iduyans preferred, and a couple of foals were of mixed breeds. I looked at them speculatively. Not a bad idea, to strengthen the Road Horses breed with the blood of the Iduyans' ponies. Still, the foals' legs seemed shorter than a purebred Road Horse’s would have been. I shook my head and walked away, thoughtfully. I noticed a tall man mending a horse's hoof. He was dressed in a drab brown cloth, but everything in his way, from the sureness of his movement to the deliberation evident in his choice of tools, reminded me of Burrich. He glanced up at me, and I could see that his left eyes was white and blind, a scar running from his hair to the point of his chin, the pupil slashed in two. I looked away and wondered if the Stablemaster would come to me, but my presence was by far less important that whatever ailed the beast. I left in silence.

I approached the gate and nodded at the sentinel. The guard wore a rough leather doublet, of the kind favored by Iduyans, but his features were of Vietmar. His green eyes regarded me speculatively but he didn't move from his post.

"I am going searching for my dog." I said, nodding toward the fields. "She left us before we entered the gates, and I am concerned. She is a good beast, I don't wish to lose her."

_Thank you, brother mine. You are not a bad beast yourself._

I refused to be baited. The guardsman looked once more at me and nodded. I stepped out unchallenged. The fields were even greener in the sun’sfull glare, and the smell of growing plants and water permeated the air. Insects buzzed, their lives sparkling among the hemp, flickering in and out existence. Some of the hemp was in bloom, and the heady scent of their flowers flowed through the air. In spite of my toils I found myself smiling as I walked toward Snowcloud, making a scene of searching for something I knew very well how to find.

She was near a canal, one of the many that crossed the fields. This was one of the main channels, and, as the best of those are, it was over a levy, to make the flowing of water easier.  The water went into the minor canals and in a pool in the end, where usually a pedal wheel would bring it up again on the next major channel.

Snowcloud pointed her low-tipped, black ears toward me, but didn't move. I frowned and stopped. There was something there, something strange. I looked around, my senses keen. Then I spotted it.

It was a demon. A water demon.

_Brother mine, stop!_

It was only Snowcloud's command that prevented me from lashing with Wit and Skill. I blinked and watched the creature. Then I looked some more, a dumbfound calm spreading in me. The Demon was moving the water from the pool to the main channel, creating something unsettlingly like a reverse waterfall. It was a strange and eerie sight, for water should not flow uphill. But the demon was evidently making it so. I watched, torn between amazement and bewilderment.

A working demon.

I blinked slowly in the sun. The demon's toil created two twins rainbows at either side of the strange waterfall. The pool glistened and gleamed in the sun, a nest for fishes and frogs and dragonflies. It was beautiful, and peaceful. Was this what the demons used to be created for, I wondered? To help man in his work, and only later converted to be deadly weapons of wars? Or was this a new use of them, spurned by the meeting of Iduyans' magic and Clerres ancient habits? What next? Fire demons in the kitchen, and air demons to help dust a room? I shook my head, trying and falling to wrap my mind about this foreign idea.

Snowcloud looked at me and moved her ears. I scratched her throat and looked toward the castle. It loomed uphill from us, looking even blacker in the stark noon colours.

I had seen more changes of the way of Clerres in half a day in this castle than in the fourteen years I have been in the White Land.

I turned my back to the pool and its industrious demon and walked toward the castle. Snowcloud trotted at my heel, pretending to be an obedient dog. Dinner was sure to be an interesting time.

I wished I was wrong.

 

I did not see my friend until dinner. Snowcloud had insisted that I clean her, and I had relented to her demands. In truth I knew I should have been outside, trying to learn as much as possible about the people of the castle. Yet something held me back. I knew not what it was, save that the place felt wrong. It nagged at me, like a rash under my skin.

I did not understand the presence of so many Iduyans, even if I had seen no sign of a Shaman. Had Kuan managed to win the nomads to his side? If so, why was the war still fought? He could have easily won over Emperor Cong if he had demons fighting for him. I shook my head. Nothing of it made sense. Dread swelled in me like rising bread.

By late afternoon, my friend was back. She slipped inside the room, and stood undecided by the door. I looked at her. Auburn was dressed in a long under-robe of soft cotton in a dark gold and a belted over robe a shade darker. It was a plain dress, without embroidery or jewellery, and the sash that closed it was of a drab brown. I said nothing and kept brushing my hair.

She glanced at me. I had expected her to speak, but she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she slid behind the vacated screen and I could hear her rummaging around her bags. I sighed and shook my head, cursing under my breath against a particular stubborn knot in my hair. Perhaps I had grown pampered and used to Vien helping me. Impatient, I tugged. My hair didn't give away, but the wooden comb did, breaking in two in my hands. The shock reverberated and I flinched with an exclamation. The Fool poked his head from the screen and smiled, amused at me massaging my palm, with half a comb stuck in my hair.

"Are you trying to make a new style? That comb would look better an inch or so farther up." He provided, helpfully. I glared at him, but something of his merriness had come back in his gaze, and I was not inclined to make too fine a point of it.

I untangled the comb and rummaged in the bottom of my favourite bag for the spare.

Something coiled into my extended hands, like a snake in waiting.

My heart stopped. The nameless dread that had plagued me since the first sight of the Lụcngọc Castle exploded in my chest.

Slowly, I extracted my hand from the bag.

The charm had suffered from being carelessly tossed in my bag for so long a time. Some of the short rods of crystal glass marked with shrieking black symbols were fastened to each other at chaotic angles. Some of the ominous beads were missing where my axe had broken the black leather straps. Others dangled by a mere string. But most of the complicated structure was as pristine as possible. I watched it, and I almost felt like my eyes were playing a trick on me, making me see something that was not there.

Snowcloud sniffed the charms and her hackles bristled. She started to growl a low, deep growl.

"Fitz? What is…Oh gods!"

I had never heard the Fool exclaiming in horror.

I turned my head, still holding the charms with one hand.

My friend was looking at the charm, and his face, always so mobile, was the strangest sight. His eyes seemed to swap in and out of focus, his gaze struggling with the charm. It was like looking at a bad dream, a nightmare when you are fighting with something that is not here but still exists.

Slowly, he extended a hand to try to touch it. He missed. His movements, usually so adroit and clever, were turned into a clumsy caricature of themselves. He reached again, like a blind man, trying to grasp the charm. His hand flailed away from the mark. I looked, unable to turn my eyes, with a growing sense of horror inside me. My mouth was parched. I was too much of a coward to look at my Keppet's face and eyes. I feared what I would find there.

My friend raised his wiry, glowed hand to massage his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and strangled.

"What… what in the name of All is that… that thing?"

I couldn't speak.

Snowcloud lurched and snapped the thing delicately from my hand and tossed it wildly toward the bed. Glass beads scattered around the room, jingling in the angles. I blinked and looked stupidly at my hand. Where the charm had touched it, it felt unclean. I rubbed it self-consciously against my trousers.

"It was… It was a charm the dead shaman was wearing over his back." I managed to say, in the end. My friend kept his hands over his face, taking ragged breaths.

I went closer and slowly passed my arm around his shoulders. He resisted for a second, then melted against me and hid his face in my neck. I could feel his short gasps over my neck. He didn't speak, his body still rigid. Snowcloud yelped like a pup and hid her tail between her legs.

I wondered what kind of trap we had delivered ourselves to.

 

We had no time to ponder over the strange charm. The gong sounded, calling us to dinner. My friend untangled himself from my embrace. He raised his shoulders and took a deep breath, his hands clenching and unclenching. Then he shook his head and Auburn was once more in front of me. It was like seeing a mask slip over somebody face. Perhaps that was what it was.

It was clear that my friend had explored the Castle a bit, for Auburn led me to an elegant antechamber where our hosts awaited us. Altanjin was there, attired in a simple gown of soft brown trimmed with furs in the Iduyan's way. The furs and colour looked well on her sun-tanned arms and face. She was deep in conversation with the scarred man I had seen in the stables, now dressed in a more formal garb. Another man was in a corner, speaking with an elderly woman. He was as boisterous and loud as she was drab and unassuming, and they made the most unlikely pair. The man was tall, and he had the dark blue eyes and chestnut hairs that are common in the western part of Vietmar, but his eyes were slanted and his cheekbones too high. He moved his thin hands as he described something, his whole face adding emphasis to his words, his heavy eyebrows almost shading his eyes. The woman was small, and old beside. Age had stooped her and whitened her hair, her face wrinkled, but she smiled bemusedly at the man, and nodded to his tale.

There was no one else. It would be dinner for few people. I hesitated at the door. I didn't relish the idea of recounting the tale of my fight with the Shaman, even if I would have to account for it as an onlooker only. Everything was already laid on the table, and the lack of servants made it an intimate, familiar meal. It fostered the sensation of society, of a community knitted by a shared goal. And they thought we were a part of it.

Auburn moved with the grace and certainty that is supposedly bone-bred in the nobility. Every face turned to us. I was used at being watched and didn't flinch as I walked inside the room. The tall, energetic man looked at me with an appreciative glance that reminded me too much of Sendàr. I turned my eyes aside, sick to my stomach.

Altanjin swept toward us, smiling and introduced us to the people present. Aside from herself, the governess of the Castle, there was Lyun, the Stablemaster, Captain OlyubenTha Chai who was, I discovered, a Captain in the Great Sail Fleet, and Kym, the elderly woman whom I gathered was one of the servants that had welcomed Chyne. She presented us as Auburn and Kep, sympathetic to their causes and came from Waitan to give us news of the latest happening. Death was not mentioned in that moment, and we took our places at the low table.

I eyed it. It was nothing like I could have found at the Royal Table, but it was fine enough, loaded with dishes both savory and sweet. Iduyans' tsuivan and buuz held the place side by side with Vietmar's bun bonambo and boluc lac. I sampled the strange food, and found it good.

We were not to be interrogated about our tidings then, as it would have been the height of bad manners. Instead, Captain Chai recounted to us his discovery of an uncharted island. This happened sometimes, but as I recalled Chyne's words, it was likely that it would be an already known one. Still, I held my tongue and professed to believe in his boisterous claims of discovery. Privately, I thought him a liar and a bragger of false tales.

During all the dinner, Auburn was a most flattering listener, asking avid questions and expressing amazement and fascination at the replies. When she professed herself unknowledgeable of seamanship and how to make their way in the wide ocean, Captain Chai was eager enough to explain.

"You can't know with precision where you are, for we can calculate the latitude quite well, but not the longitude, so we can know only half of our position." He explained, waving his chopsticks in a way that even I knew was rude. "It is true that there are other islands in that latitude, but I think the storm had brought us father than the other captains and the admirals did. We had very good, very steady winds that brought us home faster."

Auburn nodded and I glanced at her. She was a charming lady, I noticed abruptly. But then again, the Fool had always been a charmer when he wanted to be. Now she smiled at Captain Chai with a smile that was purely appreciative without any hidden meaning. He smiled back, pleased.

Altanjin shook her head, bemused.

"You did well in not speaking too much of it, Captain Chai. It is better if they think it is an old island."

If I would have been a wolf in truth, my ears would have perked up at this. As it was, I sipped tea and listened.

Captain Chai sighed and nodded, doleful.

"Indeed. When we leave, it may be a new land for us."

For the first moment Kym spoke. She had eaten little, in the way of old people, and listened to the tale with the well-meant amusement of old age, but her ancient eyes were shrewd and clear when they rested on me and my friend. I tried not to tense.

"I am too old to leave. If you go, I'll stay behind." Altanjin shook her head once more, and put her strong, capable hand over the withered one of the old woman.

"Don't say this, old mother. You'll come with us… if we go."

The Stablemaster too had been silent, partly because I suspected it was by nature a man of action rather than words, and partly because Captain Chai didn't allow for many other speakers in his own table. He turned his only eyes to us.

"Captain Chai and Altanjin think it is a good idea to leave this place for a new land. I myself am unsure of it. This is our land, after all."

Captain Chai snorted and loudly put his teacup down. "It is a White place."

I tensed. Only old habits prevented me from looking at my friend.

"True. But this doesn't make it any less ours, as well." The Stablemaster glanced at us. Making a direct query to a guest was impolite in the extreme, but refusing to answer the implicit question would be suspicious. I cleared my throat.

"I am unsure myself, I must admit. I don't come from the White Land, so it is sometimes hard for me to understand." I said, balancing my words with care like a ropewalker balances himself on a line. But from the expressions in Kym and Altanjin's faces my statement had made sense.

StablemasterLyun nodded.

"Indeed. It is the major talk, now. Well, what Tre'Kato decides, I shall do." There was an air of finality in his words, and I could hear a note that is painfully dear to my own heart. Loyalty. Even Captain Chain nodded.

They continued to talk about it, and as they spoke a sense of growing terror mixed with confusion filled me. Abruptly, I understood. They were talking about leaving Clerres for good, but why do so, I wondered, if the aim was to make Kuan Emperor of Liantharin? And why were Iduyans' there? I couldn't think of a way to ask those questions and neither, from my friend's words, could Auburn. With a sinking feeling I wondered if this had to do with the Liantharin Civil War or if there were other forces abroad. I breathed in. Never measure another man with your bushel. A rising sensation of fear accompanied me for all the dinner. I found difficult to chew and swallow, even if the dishes themselves were tasty and hearty. The World around me seemed to spin, like water in a whirlpool, and I was a leaf that had been caught and held.

Auburn made small talk during all the meal, recounting harmless tales of her travels in all of Clerres as an artisan and artists, making up for my silences. I think I was the only one to see the nervousness of her movement, the subtle tilt of uncertainty in her words. When she hinted at her time spent in the Artisans Quarter in Silvarin, I could feel the table curiosity once more.

"Batudai told us that you had spoken with the Little Lady."

Auburn nodded, sampling a buuz delicately.

"Indeed I did. I took care of Little Lady Quy for almost the whole time she was in Silvarin with me. She is a little, charming thing, and sweet, too." Everybody nodded. "She was speaking a little again when we left though I believe that my cat, Conmeo, had more paws in it than I." She added, wryly. Both Kym and Lyun chuckled.

"It was good to send her away. She needed the change, perhaps." It was Altanjin who spoke, but by the looks and nods, it was the common thought.

The dinner was by then almost finished and I looked around. My muscles were aching from the tension of keeping them clenched. I breathed in and spoke, quietly.

"I have with me Orus' charms. What it found in the Jungle, as well."

Everybody stopped speaking about the Little Lady, and every pair of eyes looked at me. I lowered my gaze to the simple, lacquered table and took a deep breath.

"It died well. It tried it’s luck by setting Silvarin on fire and attempting to steal one of the Great Lord's ships." There was a soft exclamation, by whom I did not know. The sun was setting, and no lamps had been lit, so the room was fast being dipped into darkness. I welcomed it. "It set two demons against the guards. King Chihn could not allow it to happen, and had to kill it." I swallowed. The silence was deafening. The shadows lengthened, and still no words. Auburn put a hand, delicately, over mine, and I squeezed it blindly.

Then Kym's soft voice broke it. "May his soul go to the Great Ancestors. It was a good Shaman."

This seemed to break the spell. Lyun went to light the lamps, and Altanjin and Captain Chai sighed.

"I had thought that King Chihn was on our side. Ghuozi claimed he didn't like the Whites, either." Altanjin sounded disconcerted and perhaps disappointed as well. Captain Chai shrugged.

"It fought in his city. No King could have left such a thing go unchallenged, not in front of the Great Nobles." He pointed, reasonably. "He would have lost all credibility. It should have done like Ghuozi hoped. If it had just come in silence and put itself discretely in the hand of the Kings, he would be here now."

Altanjin nodded reluctantly. "Still, I am glad that you have brought here its charms. They are what is left of it." She smiled at me a bit wanly, and I wondered if she had known Orus. I forced myself to smile back, hoping that my grimace would convey pain for the dead shaman instead of the dripping fear that was rising in me. My mind tried to grasp the charms we had seen previously in our room, but recoiled from it. It was like grasping air, or trying to hold on a dream. I could remember its existence better if I did not think of it.

Auburn had still one of her hands over mine. I looked at it and at her. She was grave, and her dark eyes were doleful. It was clear that the dinner was finished. Kyn rose from her seat, gallantly helped by Chai. Altanjin too rose, telling us that she would leave the charms with us until a Shaman could take them. I nodded. The Iduyans considered it unlucky for common people to touch and sometimes even be too close to a dead Shaman's charms, at least until some other Shamans had blessed them again. So there was no Shaman herecurrently. I put this thought away. It was a useful tidbit of information to have.

Lyun had already left, pleading an injured horse, and Kym was tottering out to sleep early in the way of some elderly when I turned toward Altanjin.

"I wish to know, is Ly DámáuKaan's tomb here? He came from my same zone of the World. I wish to pay him my respect." I do not know what urged me to speak, but the whirlwind I had been trapped inside for all the dinner sped up around and inside me. I fought to breath and swallow, and knew not why.

Altanjin shook her dark head.

"No, since he had spoken blasphemy against the Prophet." Her voice was so full of venom in the last words that both my friend and I winced. "His body has been burnt and his ashes scattered away." This was a horrid fate for a Vietmaran, though it was common indeed in my birthplace. I nodded slowly.

"The Pale Woman's Forged ones killed many I knew." I said, softly. "I mourn with you."

Captain Chai turned to face us. The room was almost empty, now, with only the four of us, with the last ray of dusk barely caressing a sky already surrendered to night. The dirty dishes had been left haphazardly on the table, to be collected later, and the cushions were in disarray. The three lamps casted a mellow light, and the room was well lit and warm, but still I felt cold.

Captain Chai's eyes met mine and he smiled a thin, pained smile. When he spoke, it was with such a depth of ache and sorrow that it choked my own breath to hear him, for his next words hit me like a knife in the heart.

"The Pale Woman's Forged ones killed many you knew. White Beloved's Icefyre killed many I knew. I wonder who is deadlier?"

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are heating up... dun dun dun...


	12. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> Next chapter up TOMORROW. Sorry, I wanted to put this one friday and the next one today, but I had pc problems :(

**__ **

**__ **

**_ Interlude _ **

_The prairie's grasses sing, played by the expert fingers of the wind. Every blade knows its symphony, and the crispiness of the late Autumn adds depth to their notes. It is the time of ripeness and full seeds, the last bounty of the year before the rigor of Winter comes to make Man and Beast alike hungry._

_Everything in the steppes knows of it, and hasten to make the most of the last fullness, before Hunger comes. Bison, wholly rhinoceros, megaloceros, megatherion, mammoths and the mighty paracetherium, the greatest of them all, graze the land, eating the rich seeds from the wild cereals and rooting the tubers of the earth in a mad scrape against time. Smilodon prides, short-faced bears, drakes, dire wolves and their smaller cousins, the gray wolf, roam the plains, hunting as the strength of their fangs and their claws allow them. Many a pup whelped in the spring does not make it to Winter, and many a old grazer's life is cut short by a swift if brutal death before the Cold comes._

_The river that cuts the grassland in two neat halves is still lively, but in the morning ice congregates on its banks, a memento of times soon to come. Graceful and sturdy, birches dot the shore, indifferent to both cold and heat, with pines and firs for company. It swells sometimes, in a wide pool that looks natural 'till its masters don't surface, their short snouts filled with a thrashing fish. The giant beaver, eight feet long, waddles over to the dyke of its own making and let the fish to its cubs, barely half its width, before splashing again in the small lake, his very own fishery. The cubs squabble over the food, hitting each other with clumsy paws and short, stubby tails._

_From the banks, hidden by the tall grasses, the men and women look and wait. There are eleven of them, and ten beasts, all meat eaters of different kinds, follow them. A man looks with his dark eyes, deeply set under its brow ridge. He waits._

_He waits more._

_He waits too long._

_He signals to the others to throw with their atlats, but just then the father beaver re-emerges from the water. The spears hit one of the cubs, who squeals and thrashes, not dying. The giant beaver shrieks and charges against the meat-eaters. The humans and their companions disperse in panic._

_A young woman turns, trips, and falls. Her companion, a gray wolf as young as she is, bravely takes a stand, but as she turns to face the charging, massive beast.They both know how little use it is. The beaver rears on its hind legs, ready to slash the two. The woman, stout and brown and built, grips the spear in her hands and grits her teeth. The giant beaver blocks the sun, a silhouette of black with golden lines._

_It trembles. It gurgles blood._

_It wavers and falls on the ground._

_The woman blinks and scrambles to her knees, her confusion echoed in the whines of her companion. She blinks again._

_A man is standing over the beaver corpse. He is tall, the woman realizes. His hair is not black like her own and of all the tribe, and his face is strange and frightening._

_A Smilodon jumps over the beast, making it move slightly, but the man doesn't budge._

_The woman understands, and swallows._

_"Coa!Coa!"_

_The voices of the Hunt-Brothers reach her. She blinks again and the man and the Smilodon have left._

_The Master of the Hunt looks at her. Then at the beaver's corpse and swallows as she had._

_"The ghost." He murmurs. A gust of wind passes over the grasses. Death and life continue, as usual, in their endless game._

____

_The mountains are dotted by big caves, wide cracks splitting the mountains. They would be too wet to be a good refuge in a warmer time, but in the Time of Ice all the water is frozen on the ground or in the air, and the caves are dry, if cold._

_This cave is not cold._

_A fire burns merrily, and the cubs jump at it only to fall back, whining, when the flame bites their muzzles and paws. They run whimpering back to their mothers, big forms huddled in the back of the cave whit wary lambent eyes. The cave their new male had brought them in is warm, and there is plentiful of food for the cubs who are growing big and sleek. None have died since the Brother had come, four years before, and the alpha female, a big she-smilodon of more than fifteen years, can't think of a time that had been so good for the pride. In four years, the six females have grown more than twenty cubs, and the older ones have already left to create their new prides elsewhere. Still, even after years, fire is an ancient enemy for all the animals but one, and they are cautious of it._

_Vanyel looks at the latest attempt from the cub, a big, burly male whose fangs are still small. He whimpers and paws at his nose, puzzled by the fire’s biting kiss. The Seer's slim hands go to the little cub and sweep him up. The pup yelps, but he is used to being handled by what his feline brain thinks as one of his fathers. Vanyel tickles the cub's belly, and the feline yelps again and paws at the air._

_"A mighty predator you are." He teases, pretending not to notice the two females who are moving, with the clumsy stealth of the kittens, behind his shoulder blades. The females look and twitch their tails. This is good, it is how kittens learn to ambush and strike, by playing with their fathers and littermates._

_The alpha female watches the strange male. The story, as she would tell it had she a voice and the thought to do so, is an old one: three males, brothers, came in the Spring, to challenge the previous male of the pride. They won the battle and two of them killed the cubs. She fought them then, but she couldn't both care for the cubs and hunt, and once, when she came back where she had hid her kittens, she found them dead. Now her mind has forgotten her previous offspring, full as she is with the new ones. It was strange in the beginning, for only one of the three brothers had the body of a Smilodon, even if everything in her being told her that the other two had the soul of one, if not the shape. If pressed, she could perhaps remember that it is only the one with the form of the big cat who had sired the cubs who now wander in the cave under the watchful eyes of the females and one of the Brothers, the one who looks like a rock, but who is as deadly as a full-grown Smilodon. Her tail twitches as one of her cubs comes and meows to be fed. She allows it and lays down to doze, in the way of cats both great and small._

_A noise in the mouth of the cave has all the four females lifting their heads, but it is only the other two brothers. The alpha female growls a greeting and the brother with the shape of a cat comes to nuzzle at her and to lap at their cub,who is still feeding, mindless of his father._

_Vanyel turns, catches the two female cubs in mid-leap and laughs again._

_Flint, almost hidden by the snow over his fur clothes, smiles at the scene, but his eyes are as cold as the snow itself._

_Vanyel scratches one of the females, as the male with whom he was playing scuffles away to play fighting with his siblings and half-siblings._

_"It is bad." The Seer's words are not a question._

_Flint sighs and it is an answer._

_"Coa's child is dead."_

_Vanyel pursues his lips over his too sharp, uneven teeth._

_"This is the third one she has lost since we came here. Three children, all under five summers of age, all of the Sickness." Vanyel's voice is quiet and detached, thoughtful. Flint casts a glance at him, but he has long since stopped hoping his Dhil'a would give his feeling to the people that mean so much to him, and holds his tongue._

_Vanyel glances at him again. "What did the Ghost say to her?" His voice is soft, quiet._

_Flint sighs again and sheds his outer garment to sit close to his Dhil'a. Vanyel wraps him in his same heavy blankets made of reindeer hides, and Flint leans against the Seer's uncomplaining body. Time passes, tickled away by the flames merry cracking and the cubs playfully yelping. Flint watches those small ones, who shall live, and thinks of the ones of the people he still thinks as his, who shall not._

_He doesn't speak for a long time. But Vanyel is used to waiting._

_When Flint's voice comes it is as soft as the snow falling outside._

_"I told her that, come Spring, I would bring her to a male capable to give her a child who won't be prey to the Sickness, if she is willing to follow me for a year."_

_The Seer has a sharp intake of breath. Strongfang, the Smilodon, raises his head and looks at his pride brothers._

_"So it is time." Vanyel speaks softly._

_Flint hesitates, remembering words spoken in haste, to console a weeping mother that came to him with empty arms. One of the many. There are perhaps five children left in the tribe, and adults sickened every year. Without the Sun Flower, they shall all die, they know of it. He knows of it._

_Then he breathes in, deeply, and nods curtly._

_"It is time." He hesitates again and glances at Strongfang. His companion's small tail twitches. His voice resonates in his mind like a rock crashing on the ground._

We come, brother.

_Flint looks at the females and the cubs, wondering how big they would be come Spring. Big enough to start the journey. It is not strange, for a pride of Smilodons as big as theirs is to be on the move often. Prey get scarce easily._

_He nods again, stronger this time, and closes his eyes. His mind wanders over the problems of the travel and the journey. Vanyel starts singing softly, anIeldra melody. Flint's lips curve in a smile._

_When he falls asleep, Vanyel covers him tenderly and banks the fire. He caresses his Dhil'a soft hair, and waits._

_____

_Spring is little more than a promise of goods to come, to be delivered every year, though not always soon enough to save the lives of the creatures of the Time of Ice. Some, be them grazers or meat-eaters, tired by the long, chilly Winter, kneel when the goal of renewal and plenty is but a leap away, too tired and worn to take those last steps. Flowers open their corollas, dotting the prairies with endless colours. The last patches of tenacious snow melts away under the onslaught of the sun. The first green, tender leaves of the tall trees give grazers hope._

_A small, heterogeneous group of figures stand where the steppes give away to the mountains.  Two stands on their hind legs and wear furs, but ten or so walks on all four, their mighty fangs bare and their powerful bodies hunched up._

_The pride waits._

_Six figures walk to the small hills. Flint looks at them, and his disfigure face contorts in his strange, lopsided smile. Vanyel looks at them, frowns, and sighs in resignation._

_The six new figures stop by the pride. Strongfang, sitting by his brothers, look at them, but says nothing. Two of the figures come with beasts themselves: a gray wolf follows the lead woman, and a sleek marten stutters about another. The two animals look at the pride of Smilodons, uneasy._

_Coa looks at Flint and bows with his hand clasped in front of herself. The other women do the same, glancing between the beasts and the men. Their movements are halting and nervous. They are short and stout and dark, with heavy bones, squares jaws and strong ridges above their black eyes._

_Flint smiles, and his smile, for all his disfigurement, is warm and kind._

_"Come, and be welcome." He speaks, in the old language of his childhood._

_Coa raises her face. Flint frowns. Vanyel's eyes turn sharply to her._

_One of her eyes is swollen, and her upper lip is broken and still dripping blood._

_Flint looks at the other women. One meets his eyes and steps up, her shoulders squared._

_"Tuma tried to stop us from coming. We fought. And we won."_

_Flint nods slowly, thinking of the Master of the Hunt. He sighs again. He searches the small group with his eyes, noticing the sturdy, full backpacks, their durable clothes, the flint blades and long spears fastened to their person. They are ready for a long travel, and the travel will be long indeed._

_The woman gulps down and speaks again in the cold silence of the Spring's morning._

_"Because… because you can bring us to men who will give us children. Children that won't die."_

_The ache in the woman's voice is a palpable thing, as dense and painful as snow upon bare skin. Flint looks at them, and nods again._

_Then he turns and walks towards the mountain._

_The Seer, the Pride, and the women follow him._

_____

_Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring chase each other in turn as the small group makes its way through the stark mountains of rock and ice and on the hills of trees and soil, and again in the plain of grasses and snow, so similar and so unlike the one they have left behind a whole Cycle ago. The Pride is strong still, though the alpha female died of old ageduring the summer, such a rare feat in this time of Ice and Rock, and one of the six women fell in a gully during a flood and was not found in time. But the others live, and they are still many._

_Days and Nights and more Days and more Nights pass by. The women look at Flint with less fear, and call him ghost. They look at the Pride with respect, and sometimes dare to touch their rough fur. Only Vanyel they don't touch and they look askance at._

_The Seer doesn't look at them at all._

_It is Spring once more. The last snow had has melted, but in the first, awkward budding of Spring the beasts of the sky and the earth have not yet fattened. The prairie flowers, as do the trees in the city, complete with the clouds in the Sky. But the time of nourishing leaves and grasses is yet to come, as is the time of fat calves. Life is still struggling in the last, desperate flailing before Warmth and Spring take hold._

_The road sprawls like a stone snake between the hills and towards the city._

_The women look at it, and their dark eyes grow round. They stop at the edge of the road, where the paved stones give way to the known soil. Vanyel steps become springier and mindless of them as usual, he walks on. His steps resound in the silence._

_Flint turns to them and smiles, walking on the road and beckoning to them. Strongfang smells the place and wrinkles his nose, and places a paw gingerly upon it. His females follow. The women look at them, and Coa takes the first step._

_They walk on, toward the city. It gets bigger with every step they take, the conical towers gleaming in the cold Spring sun, look as foreign as they are. The spirals and patterns and colours of all the shades of the rainbows and more put the prairies flowers to shame in their dazzling radiances. The city is of magic made, and it is magic itself._

_Five slender figures of colourless of hair and skin and of colourfulgarbs, wait by the road. The group stops. The Pride stops. Flint watches them, his eyes studying the Ieldyr. The five come closer and smile at the women. They are not as tall as the women are, and lean, but their graceful movements bespoke of no less strength than those of the women's people. The women look at them. Coa and Tushia and Mirka and Tyar and Briani, each watches one of the Ieldryr._

_Flint shivers in the hot day. His eyes get rounder and rounder, and his muscles contract under the clothing. He trembles as a babe for the Future happens in front of him._

_Vanyel dances by him, and put a wiry arm around his Dhil'a waist. Flint leans on him._

_Vanyel presses his hand over Flint's, and in his dark grey-blue eyes there is reflected a happiness as big as the sky above is blue._

_Flint closes his own eyes, pressing his forehead against Vanyel's and hugs him fiercely._

_An Ieldra makes a move, to relieve one of the women from her backpack. Coa looks at him for another moment, and relents._

_And so it begins._

_The sun moves in the sky, indifferent to Life's travails._


	13. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> Things get hotter... Oh yes.

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** Chapter Ten: Fire **

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_Are all men likely to see the hand of Fate in their lives, or is it something I perceived keener than most, for I am the Catalyst?_

_This is a question I have no answer for. Yet, looking back, I can see several times when Fate has steered my course. It was not always a current I had to fight, like a salmon leaping upstream. Sometimes it was a push in the direction I wished to take. Such it was when I took the place of the Future's Pride Physik._

_It was rare, exceedingly so, for a Great Sail Ship to take barbarian hands. All the Great Sail Ships sailed with a full complement of men, more than necessary, for the travel lasted years, and several died at sea. In truth, it used to last more than it does now. By direct route, the course between Jamailia and Clerres is no more than eight months, if the winds and the sea hold true. But the Great Sail Fleet used to touch several more strange and distant coasts before setting the bow back to the White Land. So it took us three whole years to arrive in Clerres._

_When I think back, I recall it as a time different from any I had ever had, before or since. There is little privacy on a ship, even one as big as the Future's Pride, with three decks and more than two hundred people aboard. As the Physik, I enjoyed a cabin all for myself, and the sickbay was mine to care for, as well. Even more so since even the Physik's assistant had died, and I was left alone. Jek was not so lucky. In the first year, she had to string her hammock among the hands on the quarterdeck. So both Chyne and Fizek were left with me. They were both under two years of age, and lively besides. Sometimes I still wonder how I managed two small children and my duties as a Physik. But manage I did, and learnt much besides._

_A ship like the Future's Pride is nothing like the Rurisk. It was not a vessel made to coast shallow waters, to dart to an enemy and retreat into the harbor. Rather, it was a big vessel, carrying royal goods, that could nonetheless sail at great speed. Even Jek, who had sailed liveships, was amazed by the pace we kept for much of the travel, and of the ability of the Captain and crew. She learnt the mysteries of lines and sails and navigation. I never did. I was still learning how to use my body, and my clumsiness was painful to bear. I could not caper up in the stays without risking injury, nor were my hands adroit enough to tie a knot or rig a line._

_Still, in one thing it was very much like the Rurisk, though it was more a fault of the people than of the ship: neither would be able to sail for long time in the open ocean, where there is no sign of land, without getting utterly lost. The captain of the Future's Pride kept careful notes of the journey, and of our direction, but several times a storm knocked us off course and we didn't find the cove we were aiming to. The hands claimed that in every voyage one ship at the very least is lost to the sea, never to be heard of again._

_I was never troubled by this. For the first time, I understood the Fool’s utter certainty. I knew I would come to Clerres. I knew not what would happen after, but there would be no watery grave for me and mine._

_Fate was the wind blowing my sail, but I was the one setting the course._

We made our way back to our borrowed room.

I pleaded tiredness, for my friend has grown silent. So had our bond. He was far too good at separating himself from me. We walked in silence in the clean stone corridors, lit by well-spaced lamps. The yellow light was unchallenged by stars or the moon, for not even a small window opened in the hallway. A castle made for defense, and well made at that.

I knew not what to say, so I said nothing. Our steps echoed against the bare walls.

I went on, opening the door. By the time I had come inside, and turned to face my friend, he was not here.

I blinked stupidly at the threshold, but only the empty darkness echoed me. I stood silent. What could I do? If the Fool had chosen solitude, I couldn't force my presence on him. The silence in our bond was as ominous as the one of the empty, silent castle. Snowcloud was sleeping in a tangle, a tight ball of black fur against a deeper darkness, dreaming of nothing. Not for the first time I envied her, and her simpler life.

I sighed and sat on the bed, my head in my hand. Memories raced unbridled in my mind.  It may be that men will curse me for my role, he had said, a lifetime and half a World away. But this was no possibility. It was a fact. In the dark of the night, I faced a truth.

For the people whose beloved had been killed by the fury of dragons, I was no better than Kebal Rawbread had been for the Six Duchies during the scourge of the Red Ships. I had trusted my Prophet, and by doing so, people would die. Have died.

I handled that thought carefully, for it was sharp enough to kill me. It was not the same, I protested. How could I be called responsible for choice of another creature? Yet in the same way a circling whirlpool will trap its prey and keep it, my thoughts circled back to the meat of the matter. It was no stretch of the imagination to think that woken dragons would kill and maim. It was to happen, as surely as the devastation of the Six Duchies was to happen as soon as the Forged ones were released upon the people they had once loved.

I looked at the stones under my feet without seeing them. Pebbles in a pond, I thought. We act in the World and know not what our actions would truly bring into being. What is the connection between a dragon in Aslejval, and a demonic invasion in Liantharin? I pressed my fingers over my temple. Memories are both a blessing and a curse, I have found. That night, they were far more of the latter than of the former.

Time and time again I faced the truth.

I couldn't refuse the burden of my actions.

And neither could my Dhil'a. I sighed at the thought. For all his quick tongue, he had a soft nature, unchanged by all that befell on him. I looked at the night out of the window, and wondered how he was faring. I shook my head slowly and let myself fall on the bed. A headache lingered in my temples, and my half-admitted realization was heavy in my chest.

Sleep, I firmly told myself. Sleep would shield me for a time from all of it, and upon waking perhaps some aspect of it would have come clear.

I searched for Snowcloud with my mind, begging silently for the clean simplicity of the wolf. I concentrated on her dream of running in the coolness of the jungle night, hunting with me and Keala. For Snowcloud, it was a dream of silence, warmth, and swiftness. I shared it, becoming one with her, and let unconsciousness overwhelm me.

The people were moving in the plain. It was a long column of desperation, the stench of unwashed bodies and miscellaneous possessions clinging in the hot, humid summer air. I sneezed. The White Road was packed for many miles with refugees, their once different clothing made similar by days on the road. The once rich silk reduced to rags made the nobles one with the servants. The lucky ones carried hand carts for their meager possessions and trudged on. There was no sound, save the distant thundering. I stood and watched in silence. Their Wit-Sense overpowered me. Pain and anguish and the terrible numbness that come after pain and anguish have gone and all that is left is a nothing filled with more agony than the worst of wound.

_Brother, brother, wake._

I couldn't move. I couldn't block their pain away. All of them seemed to pass in front of me, and their eyes, filled with emotions too dire to reveal were a silent accusation more poignant than a scream. I wanted to fall on my knees. I wanted to beg. If I could have died at that moment, I would have done so. It would have been easier than feeling their pain. Far easier than the terrible, soulless cowardice of wishing not to know that it was because of me.

_CHANGER!_

The mind scream made me bolt. I sat up straight, so fast that I almost gave myself injury. I opened my eyes.

The bright light of the day seemed almost a profanity after the darkness of my dreams. I passed my hand over my face. Snowcloud's mind touch was soft and keen. She whined. I tried to reassure her without words, but I doubted even as I did so that she believed me. My eyes felt gritty, my mouth foul. I had slept with yesterdays clothes on, and my boots had dirtied the coverlets. I cared about nothing of this. I looked blankly at the wall in front of me, letting the sounds from the wharf under my window float in the morning.

Then I rose to face the day.

 

I did not try to find the Fool, for there are few activities as futile when he doesn't wish to be found. I washed and changed into clean clothes, and went to the dock. I had little trouble finding the way, the sounds of loading a ship were clear in the sharp morning air. Perhaps the talkative captain would be able to tell me something more, I thought.

Snowcloud was at my heel, silent and dark as a shadow. She didn't ask me about my dream of the night. I didn't speak. I had to walk in a passage carved in stone, not unlike the ones in my own castles, and when I emerged in the light of the day I found myself standing on a wharf. It was built directly over the clear water with sturdy wooden stilts buried stoutly into the deep ocean. The Aquamarine Sea was true to its name that day, and the water was of the colour of the best Thantresasn sapphire. Fishes of all colours darted between the pillars. I watched them closely. Fairer woods intersected with darker ones spoke of recent repairing. Extensive, if the amount of wood being changed was any indication. I lifted my head to watch the ship.

It was not a big ship – it would never made the passage to the side of the World I was born – but it was doughtily built and well armed, and spacious besides. Jek would surely been able to explain better than I could, but even I could see it was a small jewel. I eyed its name. The Jewel-Flint. In spite of everything, I almost smiled.

Captain Chai was busy directly three men who were carrying a mountain of baskets and barrels from the wharf to the ship proper. On occasion he bent his back and helped lifting a cask himself. I watched for some minute before walking toward them.

"I may give a hand, if it is needed."

The captain turned his blue eyes at me and dried his brow with his sleeves.

"You are as welcome as the rain in the Dry Season, Kep. I have almost none of my usual crew."

I nodded. I had gathered as much. I looked around and seized the corner of a cask that one of the three men was carrying just in time to save it from a tumble in the ocean. It was heavy. I wondered what they were carrying, but did not ask.

Snowcloud went to break her fast, but I was not hungry. I toiled the morning away. Hard work is, I have found, a way to prevent the mind from thinking, and I had no desire for thought. I laboured steadily on. Sometime in the morning I took off my shirt and left it on the wharf, before continuing my work. I helped lift the casket and barrels and delivered them safely inside the ship under Captain Chai's directions. Storing a vessel is a high art, and one I have never attempted to grasp. Jek once tried to explain it to me, but I never went beyond the basic concept that the weight must be balanced just right, and that the perfect balance varies from ship to ship. I drank greedily from a barrel when thirsty, but time soon lost its meaning in the simple, repetitive work.

Morning was gone, and the sun was past its peak before we finished. My muscles ached, but it was a good ache. I straightened my back with a hand on the small of it and checked myself. I was good, I decided. It was not likely I would suffer from a spasm that night. I nodded a salute to the three men. Two of them, the youngest of the lot, were called Kiai and Hengis, and I suspected their blood was as mixed as the one of the captain. I never heard the name of the third, a wiry, silent hand that recalled to my mind the houndmaster of Fisil.

Captain Chai smiled tiredly at me and bowed with a flourish to hand me my shirt. I took it gratefully, still too hot to don it.

"Come on, Kep. I know where Altanji keeps the light wine. We deserve some coolness and something better than water to wet our throats."

I smiled and nodded.

"A good idea. I am thirsty."

We made our way in the subterranean of the castles. The stones kept them cool, and the shade was pleasant after a morning under the sun. The Rainy Season was ending, and the great heat was soon to come.

Chai spoke enough for two. He told me of the ship, which I surmised was his own, and how he had come from the border of Liantharin, in those places on the hem of Clerres where you never know if you are walking on White Land or not. His father had been Liantharinan, but his mother was Iduyan. She had been killed, together with his two younger sisters, by Icefyre.

In my mind, I saw the eyes of the dream. I swatted them away like you swat a fly, but as a fly they were insistent, and I could not block their buzz from my thoughts.

He left me in a room, if a common room or his own private parlor I couldn't tell.  It was in a quiet corner, and it held nothing but a low table and some plain cushions. But the table was lacquered and the cushions comfortable, and the open window filled the simple place with golden light.

I sat on the ground and stretched, trying not to think. I checked my Skill-Links with my Solos. I had no desire for a true communication, because what could I tell them? But I wanted to know if any emergency had arose in my kingdom. So far, none of them seemed to think so, even if no words were exchanged. I let the links go. Snowcloud wasn't anywhere nearby. I quested for her as I waited. She was in the kitchen, and with a jolt I was aware that she was not alone. I breathed out. Better, perhaps, that she was with my Dhil'a than she was with me.

Chai came back with two cups, a bottle full of cool, light wine and some light repasts, steamed rice-bums. I remembered to fill his cup before mine. I had less status than he had, at least officially.

He took a swing and grinned at me from above the brim.

"Thank you. With everybody in Behit I am gloriously understaffed."

I nodded and tried to look knowledgeable as I ate a couple of steamed bums. I had not eaten since the day before, and I did not dare to drink with an empty stomach, even if the wine was light.

I decided to attempt a stab myself.

"We had thought of going to Behit ourselves, but there were enough people already and we decided taking the charms here was more important." I ventured.

With my relief, he nodded back.

"Yes, you did well. Too many cooks spoil the soup, after all. And how many people do you need, really, to burn a library? I told so much to Tre'Kato himself, but he was adamant that he needed them all for his plan and so…"

He went on to prattle of his woes, but I wasn't listening anymore. The smell of burnt paper filled my nostrils. I almost choked. The day was hot in spite of the wall of stone, and the hotter part of it besides, but I felt like I had ice in my veins. My head swam. Burnt paper. A library in Behit.

The White Library.

I gripped the cup so strongly that I would have broken it had it been made of clay instead of wood. No. They couldn't, could they? It was not possible. They wouldn't dare. Nobody in Clerres would dare.

I gulped down the wine. The cold liquor slid in me. I breathed in its fumes. Later. Later. Now I needed to extract all the information from the chatty captain. I had met others like him, who made up on land for the aloofness they had to keep on the sea. Better for me, but I would be a fool to think him one. Nobody who makes to be captain in the Great Sail Fleet can be a fool.

"I agree with you. But I suppose Tre'Kato knows better." I managed to interject in the flow of his words. He shrugged and nodded reluctantly.

"Yes, he is a canny one, I'll give you that. And we need the ashes, after all. We have enough blood and skin for now, but not enough ashes." He sighed again and stood up. He stretched and yawned. "Well I did my part. I am glad you are here, you could stay until they come back, perhaps."

He gave me a sly gaze that made my blood turn cold. I licked my lips and tried to rein in my panic.

"My wife and I will probably stay until then. She may want to sell her beads in the villages around." I added, marking my married status. He heaved a sigh and nodded.

"Indeed. Well, your wife is a lucky woman." He looked speculatively at my chest, and I regretted not having donned my shirt. He grinned again, winked at me and left, whistling.

As soon as he was gone, I put on my shirt.

 

I went back into my room and hauled water for a bath. I bathed. And waited.

I did not have to wait for long. Twilight was approaching when I heard somebody behind me, and Snowcloud’s familiar presence growing nearer. I turned. My Keppet was in the doorway. I blinked at him. He wore a simple long tunic and under gown, all in black, with low black shoes. The light from the window gilded his hair. Daylight reached past his silhouette into the hallway.  The direct rays from the sun hit his face, but instead of making his features clearer, it obscured them, making of his living visage a mask of burnished wood. His eyes were pool of blackness. I said nothing, but for a moment, I knew fear.

Then he sighed and closed the door behind him, leaning over it. Snowcloud jumped on the bed and made a tight ball, her blue eyes looking at us through her now black fur. 

With his eyes closed, he spoke in a soft, quiet voice.

"I was with Altanji today. I helped cook dinner, and gave her a bead." Something that was not a smile twisted his narrow lips. "They are making charms. This much I gathered. Special charms. Orus was one of those who was working on them, and had been for several years. When… "His voice faltered. I waited. "When Icefyre came and destroyed the Iduyans, they weren't ready. They didn't know of dragons. They couldn't defend themselves." His tone was flat, like one reciting a poem by route. But I knew better. Our bond felt like jagged stone against my skin and dissonant notes. I closed my eyes against his pain. It echoed mine all too well.  "Then Tre'Kato came. She told me a lot about him. He is an historian, and in Kuan's court, though now he works by himself."

I nodded. I had supposed that this was nothing to do with Liantharin's civil war. Snowcloud started to play with something in a corner, something that jingled as she dragged it around. It annoyed me, and I shot her a glance. She, as is her wont, ignored me.

"They are working about two different kinds of charms. One is against the dragons. The other… I haven't understood well. Everybody knows of it, and I didn't want to make too many questions."

I nodded again. It was a fine line, to learn without giving impression to. He sighed again and walked tiredly toward the bed. He sat over it, and hid his eyes in the palm of his hands.

"Your turn."

I took a deep breath. I was about to speak about my learning from Chai, when a particular strong shake from Snowcloud sent her toy flying. The jingle was sharp in the silence. I turned sharply, meaning to ask her for silence.

I saw it.

It was the charm. The one I almost couldn't see, with its glass beads and black skin.

Black skin and glass beads.

The World stopped around me as I watched the thing on the floor. Bile rose in my mouth and I chocked on it. No. It couldn't be possible. No. It must be a mistake. They couldn't.  Chai's words echoed in my emptiness, their meaning too obscene to be true, too clear to be false.

_And we need the ashes, after all. We have enough blood and skin for now, but not enough ashes._

Glass made of ashes. Ashes made of burnt prophecies. Black skin made of…

"Fitz? Beloved!"

He had risen to his feet like a puppet from a string. He came to me and took me by the shoulders, forcing me to watch him. As I was forcibly turned, I met Snowcloud's blue eyes. They were as clear and deep as the ice of Aslejval, and held as many secrets.

I forced myself to watch my Keppet’s worried gaze. He was tired, his eyes full of blood, but I knew I had to look at him as I spoke, this time if ever.

"They are making charms to stop the White's sight." My voice sounded like a stranger's to my own ears. "From the ashes of burnt prophecies, and the blood and black skin of…"

I choked. I couldn't say more. I couldn't speak a name.

I watched him. I watched as the realization of what I was saying crept up on him, and wished desperately as only a doomed man can wish to be able to spare him. I watched as revulsion and horror stole the light from his features as surely as the night was stealing the light from the day outside. He made a sound, between a sob and a cry and clenched his fingers on my shoulders. It hurt. I didn't make a sound. Snowcloud whined. Our bond was a jumble, a chaos of pain and dread and repulsion and desperate incredulity, of dark reds and stark yellows and strident notes.

He put his forehead on my shoulder and sobbed.

"I wish it would all go away," he mumbled softly.

I closed my own eyes and stood still and silent as the stone castle surrounding us.

I couldn't give him even that.

   



	14. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> This is the chapter also called "The Author is Evil".

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** Chapter Eleven: Blood **

 

[The header is not mine, it is from Serie11, who has made this fanfic of my fanfic! *O* isn't it amazing? :D :D ]

 

_The origin of why each country of Clerres represents itself with a jewel set in flint is a fiercely debated topic in the scholarly circles. All agree that the different types of jewels that are used are the most common in each country, such as the amber of Vietmar, or the amethyst of Uzkabat. Why they started wearing them as such is the main topic of discussion._

_Some claim that it was to the liking of the first king of Behit, and that he appreciated how the white diamond looked against the darker flint, and that Liatharin copied it off his descendants when they joined together as one country._

_Other people claim it had nothing to do with that at all, but instead think that diamond was so rare that to find any was a miracle, and that the amount that was found was encased in flint. In order to preserve the jewel, the rulers of Behit wore both at the same time._

_Another theory is that when Kizah and Atremandia became countries of Clerres around the same time, both competed to have the largest gems on them when they met, and that by having flint around or inside the gem, it made it look bigger. The queen of Uzkabat at the time was quite enamoured with how the flint looked against her amethyst, and so she started wearing it as such as well. The fashion spread to all the other countries, and is now considered ancient tradition._

_A theory that should only be taken lightly is the one that fewest people advocate for. They tie it to the ancient word for jewel; vanyel. Mentions of a pairing of vanyel and flint are elusively there in some of the oldest texts possessed by the White monks, copied countless times, with most of their meaning being lost in the copying. They also try to link it to a children’s rhyme, to try and give their theory credence. Very few people have taken this as the truth, but strangely enough, while other theories have come and gone over the centuries, this one seems to have always been spoken about._

_But the significance of the jewel and the flint are likely lost forever, and we will probably never know the exact reason all of the countries represent themselves so._

_From ‘A History of the Symbols of Clerres,’_

_by Citymaster Atid_

 

I held him to me as he breathed, harsh, rough breathes that shocked him to the core. I watched dully on, twilight mingling into dusk and into night. I didn’t count time. There was no time at all. I pressed his thin, lean body to mine, my cheek against the silk fineness of his hair. And I waited. I did not think. No, rather I thought too many thoughts to put them in order, without sense or logic, a jumble of  emotions and half-formed images, dragons in the sky and leaping over defenseless people, and of flames burning papers, their blackened pages curling up as the fire ate them away. And, above all, tinting my thoughts, there was a dull sense of hopelessness. I closed my eyes and swallowed against the lump of my throat.

Snowcloud whined keenly, her soft voice echoing my friend’s as her soul echoed his pain. I looked at her. She was at our side, her flank pressing our knees, her weight comfortable and familiar. I breathed in.

It was full night when my friend disentangled himself from my embrace. The fire had burned down to embers. I did not care.

He turned his face from me and knelt like a puppet with tangled strings to throw some more logs into the fireplace.

“We must go. Now. Tonight.”

I said nothing. The lines of his back were as taut as his speech was clipped. Gone was his usual flippancy and grace. I sighed.

He turned to me, almost abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, and stopped at my gaze. For we both knew how little use our departing would have.

I shook my head slowly. It felt like I had a stone above my neck.

“Keppet. Think. Captain Chai said it would be less than three tendays before everybody would be back.” I spoke softly, almost gently. “They are already there. They may be… “ I stopped. I couldn’t say it. “Even tonight.” Tonight, or the day after. What point there was?

My friend’s shoulders sagged. He folded his elegant hands in his lap and stared at them, unseeing. I tried to calculate time. It was at least twenty days, even with a fast road horse, from Lụcngọc to Behit. Less than three tendays. I closed my eyes and breathed in the night air, full of the scent of the ocean. It tasted bitter in my mouth.

Snowcloud whined again. I scratched her between her ears.

“We are when we should be, but not where.” My friend’s words were bitter. I sighed and let myself fall on the bed. There were no Skill-Pillars in Clerres, and their people had never used birds to send messages as we did in my birthland. I toyed with the idea of contacting my Solos, but discarded it. What could they do that I couldn’t?

“I hope… I hope they won’t hurt the monks.” I lifted my head and looked at him again. The fire was blazing, and it highlighted his profile with its red light, dancing over his narrow nose and high cheekbones. Gombochab. I thought of the ancient monk that came with us in the Jungle. A flash of pain passed through me. I licked my lips. I had nothing to offer but platitudes. Time passed, as it is wont to do.

In the end, I spoke. “Tre’Kato is coming here. We could wait for him.” I said, softly. My words sounded harsh in the silence.

He nodded slowly and stood up. It was something to do, I suppose, and it was better than nothing. The Fool walked toward the bed, his movements like the one of a person sleepwalking. He lowered himself in the bed. I didn’t want to sleep either. But what else could we do? Snowcloud jumped in the bed with us. It was by far too small a bed for two men and a wolf-dog, but I didn’t mind. I hid my face in her fur, smelling her wolf scent. She nuzzled at my forehead with her wet nose, and then stretched to put her muzzle over the Fool’s neck. He extended a hand to scratch her.

We were silent for the whole night. I dreaded sleep. But, in the end, the sounds of the waves and the smell of the night lulled me to sleep.

And to dream.

 

We lived in the castle for four days. I helped with the horses and with the ship. We travelled to nearby villages, ostensibly to trade the beads my wife had made. I also watched the channels, and asked news of the canals’ to all who came to the market days. I neither heard or saw anything to suggest that the upkeep had been in any way lacking.

That was the only good point of that time. My Dhil’a was quiet and thoughtful. I had only seen him that way once, a long time ago, as I was Skill-Dreaming and watched him from a fire after the death of our King and the stillbirth of a baby that would have beena king. His eyes were devoid of any hope. He moved like a man in the throes of dream. Or, rather, a woman. I couldn’t talk with my Dhil’a once in those three days. I met Auburn, always. I learnt much about Auburn in that time, though I wish I could help my friend instead.

In the morning of the third day, I woke to find him looking at the wharf under our window. The gulls were calling out. The waves crested and broke. I blinked, rising up on one elbow. 

“Fool?” I called for him. He turned. His face was immobile, his high forehead smooth, his lips narrowed. Tears were streaming his dark cheeks. As he blinked, slowly, more tears fell. I hastened to my feet.

“Nightmares?” I asked, softly. I had had my fill of those. Dragons and demons chased each other in my dreams.

He shook his head, slowly. He was fully dressed in his Auburn’s garb.

“No. No nightmares.” His voice rang hollow.

My brow knitted. “Then what…” The pain in his gaze stopped me in my tracks. He let out a deep, ragged breath, and stalked out of the room.

I sat back on the bed, dumbfounded. Snowcloud put her head over my knees. I shook my head, uncomprehending.

Only later I would have understand the cause of his tears. For what dream can prophesize a future that is already a past?

 

In the evening of the fifth day, I put the horses we had borrowed back in their stalls. I was worried. I had explored, either by other’s words or by my own eyes, most of the south of the province, but all the North loomed. I had not much time left. Soon, I would have to leave. I had skilled to Chyne and Vien and Bitter Moon the night before, and all of them assured me of no news. That did not surprise me either. If the library had burnt, it would still be time before the news would get all the way from Behit to Vietmar.

I put the horses in the stable, debating what to do. I had not slept well the past few days, and I slipped when I filled the trough for the horses. Water splashed on the ground. I watched it spreading and blinked. I was sure that those stalls had been empty before. Apparently not so. I shrugged it off and trudged on to eat.

After that first night, we had each eaten as we saw fit, in the time and way we preferred. There was always something set up in the kitchen. I slipped in. Altanjin was nowhere to be seen, but she had left a bowlful of meat for Snowcloud, and steamed bums for me. I couldn’t see Auburn, but I supposed she had already passed through. My companion jumped on the meat. I was not hungry, but I knew better than to go without food or sleep for too long. I took some of them and brought them with me over a bamboo plate, leaving Snowcloud behind to feast. At my first taste, I almost gagged. Bitter melon is not something I cherish, but it was so common in eastern Vietmar’s recipes that I had learnt to eat it. I dutifully swallowed the three buns almost without chewing. I thought of searching for the Fool and trying to force him into a conversation, though I knew all too well what little chance I had to accomplish anything.

After ten minutes, I decided to stop my search. I was feeling tired, and wobbly on my feet. I blinked. I must have been more tired than I thought.

I do not recall how I made it to my appointed room. There seemed to be a maze of corridors and my grasp on where I was was vague and uncertain. I stumbled more than once. One time I fell to all fours and I found myself giggling at the irony of the situation.

In the end, I made it in my bed where I sunk, gratefully. Rest now. Think later. I quested to Snowcloud and found her asleep in the kitchen. I smiled as I sank into a blessed sleep devoid of dreams.

 

When I woke, I was bound.

I did not open my eyes and fought to keep my breath calm. My mouth was foul, as if I had ate rotting carrion. My head felt light over my shoulders, and strangely empty. I banished those thoughts, and tried to concentrate on my surroundings.

I was not anymore in the room I had fallen asleep in. The place smelled like damp, and brackish water and wet stones. The smell wasn’t pleasant, but neither was it filthy. I was on a pallet of some sort, thin but present, the kind that peasants use in their huts. I tried with all my might, but I could hear nothing save for a distant dripping.

My hands were bound behind my back, with my thumbs tied together. My ankles were free, as I discovered by moving them around. I couldn’t open my eyes if I had wished, for a blindfold was securely tied over them. I was not gagged. This did not comfort me. It only meant that there was nobody to hear me if I screamed. I could feel nobody close by with my Wit, save the always present rats and bugs.

I quested toward Snowcloud. She was still asleep. Drugged, I was sure, as I was. But she didn’t seem hurt. I probed deeper, but all I felt was her sleepiness. Then I tried to gauge the Fool.

I felt nothing.

I quested toward him again, with more urgency. But it was like battering a crystal wall with my bare hands, or like a fly trying to go out of a window. There was something, there, but it was dead to me.

I had not realised how much I had grown to depend on his strange, eerie presence. To not feel him anymore was as strange as waking up without being able to see red, or blue. I quenched the panic that threatened to engulf me. I swallowed around the bitterness in my mouth and tried to reach for my Solos.

I felt nothing.

Dumbfounded, I stood stock still. Nothing, not a stretch of the links we shared. How was it possible here, in Clerres? Again, I tried, straining myself to the utmost, but to no avail. I relented and laid panting and limp with fatigue on the straw mattress. I was shaking and sweating, and the vague pain in my head was transforming in a Skill headache.

My Wit was as sharp as ever, though, and this magic came to my aid when the other failed. I felt before hearing some people approaching. I stood still, my back turned to them, and listened. Three people, by the sounds of their steps. I ached to know if my friend was there, and what had happened to him. Had he escaped, I wondered?

The people were speaking, in Liantharinan. It is a language that I understand better than I speak. The first person spoke it with the ease of a native. A man, I judged, not young and not old, perhaps of the age my body showed. His voice had the cultured sound of a scholar. I had never heard him speak.

“… So our charms aren’t working as well as they should, if they have come here.”

 The first voice spoke. Another one answered. A woman, and speaking with the inflection of the Iduyans, but not Altanji. She, too, was unknown to me.

“I know not why, He-Who-Rides-Alone.  We did all well. But they work not as good as they should. We talked of it. Whites be like bugs. They have no feeling. The charms work. I know not why they work not.”

I couldn’t make out all of their conversation, but their voices were getting closer. Coming to see their prisoner, I gauged. I moved, to be in a better position to kick if need arose, though I knew well as I did so how futile it was.

“I know, Esen. I am thinking about it. So, here is our prisoner.” The steps had stopped close to what I supposed was my cell. “When will he wake, Depth?”

The next voice was the one who shocked me to the core.

“Soon, Kato. I am surprised he hasn’t already.”

I stood astonished.  The man spoke a good Liantharin, with the ease of one who had to speak it or go without food. But his inflection was not from any country of Clerres.

I could hear the Six Duchies in his voice.

I must have made some startled movement, for the next thing I heard were the sound of metal over metal and the step coming closer.

The Liantharinan’s voice, Kato’s voice, spoke.

“You are awake.” It was not a question. I debated whatever to negate it. I was still aching. My head ached, and the taste in my mouth made me gag every little while. While I was thinking, the blindfold was yanked from my eyes. I blinked and opened them.

I was lying on the ground, and he was towering over me. He dressed in a simple garb, a long tunic of dark green with silver threads. His boots were sturdy and still dusty from the road. He had long, black hair, straight as the hair of people of Liantharin often are. His eyes, too, were dark. He was more plump than lean.  He looked at me with a quietness that unsettled me more than any outward malice. He didn’t seem cold, or angry, or speculative. He just looked at me. Then he sighed.

“Well then, King Chinh. You really couldn’t stay out of this, could you?”

I didn’t answer this and passed my eyes on my surrounding. We were, as I had thought, in some kind of subterranean cell. It was empty of everything but the pallet I was in, but clean. Beyond the iron gates there were two people. A woman, so like Altanji that she could be her mother, looked at me with scorn. Her face was marred with fine wrinkles, and her neck had the spots of age. Her long hair was more white than blonde, but she was lean and strong still, and she wore a suit comfortable for riding.

The last person was leaning over the gate. I looked at him in disbelief. He was young, less than thirty years of age, and stocky and dark. His face bore the mark of a Buck man, as clear as any tattoo could be. His long, black hair was encased in a warrior tail. He smiled at me, sardonically.

Tre’Kato sighed again and looked at me. I thought about asking for Auburn, but decided not to. Perhaps they had not caught him. A wild, mad hope, I knew, but one I couldn’t help holding.

I said nothing. I had expected them to question me, to talk to me. They did nothing of the sort. Tre’Kato shrugged and walked out. Depth closed the cell and turned a key in the lock.

They turned to go. I watched them in disbelief. They had not done anything to me. They hadn’t even questioned me. They were almost out, when I thought of asking something myself. But by then, it was too late.

The door of the jail closed, and I was left thinking, alone in the demi-darkness.

I looked around. The cell was illuminated by a simple clay lamp. It was not enough, but it would have to do. My cell had only three walls, the last one was a gate of metal bars with a lock. The bars were shaped oddly, like a portcullis, and the door opened from up to down. There were other cells beside mine, three in front of me, and two at my right. On the end of it, the door Tre’Kato and the others had left. From the humidity, I gauged we were beyond the sea level, in the cliff under Lụcngọc. The other three cells in front of mine were empty.

I managed to pull myself on my feet after two falls. I stumbled, still drugged, over the gate and leaned on it, panting. The coolness of the metal felt irrationally good against my forehead.

As far as I could see, I was alone in all the cells. I glanced around, searching for something, anything to cut the ropes with. But the cell was clean and the bars smooth as the lock.

After a while I turned and fell on the pallet again, my shoulders, aching for the unnatural position, against the wall. I tried to think.

_BROTHER!_

I almost jumped on my feet. Snowcloud’s call was foggy with drugs, but it had all the urgency of a she-wolf calling for her pup. It rang into my mind like the toll of a bell, making me cringe and redouble with pain.

_I am well, sister. I am well._

I could feel her relief. I shared it.

_Where are you, sister?_  I asked, closing my eyes.

  1.  I could feel all her disgust.  _Outside in the kennels. The first woman who comes, brother mine, is going to say goodbye to her hand._



_What about the first man?_

_That man shan’t have children again, brother mine. Ever._

I couldn’t help but smile.

_Be careful, sister. Are you injured?_

I could feel her taking stock of her body.

_No. But I feel like I had been mauled by a tiger, brother mine. Where is the Scentless One?_

A pang of fear and pain mixed seized my heart.

_I do not know, Snowcloud. I do not know._

It sounded as hopeless as I felt. I opened my eyes, looked at the lamp, and tried to think. There was something the small group had said, something I could use. I racked my brain on what little I knew. But I was still more than half drugged. I fell asleep, my back at the wall.

 

The sound of the lock opening woke me. I kept my eyes closed. I cracked open my eyes, just a sliver. All I could see was a figure of black against the light of the lamp. The figure had a tray that held a bowl of soup and a smaller bowl of rice, with a jug filled with fresh water. I looked around and wondered. How long had I been asleep? Was it dark, or light? I had no way to know.

The figure kneeled by me. He took out something. All at once, I was completely awake. I almost tensed when the knife passed close to my skin, before realizing he was freeing me so that I could eat. He did not know I was awake. I prepared to tense.

As soon as he had finished I dashed to the door. The man, Depth, screamed and jumped. I had a moment to reach the open gate. But he was quick of thought. He threw the rope between my feet. I stumbled, staggered and fell, still inside the cell. I hit the gate with my shoulder, and it fell with me. I managed to put my left hand on the ground.

The gate fell over it.

I watched with horror the sharp metal grazed my ring finger. I watched my little finger roll away, not connected anymore to my body, a small knob of flesh. The red blood scattered over the stone floor.

Then I screamed.

Far away, a wolf howled.

 

I looked at my mutilated hand, still in shock. The Iduyans knew how to treat a wound, but I had lost a finger and part of my left hand, for nothing but my own idiocy.

I was not anymore in the cell. I had been brought, still almost unconscious with shock, in the dining room where I had eaten in several occasions already. They had cleaned the wound carefully, and bandaged it. Some kind of ointment had dulled the pain on the flesh. I was left to stare, dumbly, at my hand. I had drank the potions they gave me, in spite of their bitter flavor.

I was not alone. Depth and Esen were watching me, the latter with barely controlled contempt, the former with an unreadable expression. If he felt guilty for me I couldn’t tell.

The potion had made me light-headed, but at once it had filled with me with unknown clarity. I dimly wondered if it was some kind of charris seed, but I knew very little of Iduyan’s herb lore.

I breathed in and sipped some more. Snowcloud had just quieted in my mind. It was dark, but I knew not if the sun had just set or if it was close to dawn, nor how many days, if any, had passed. I breathed in the fruity smell of the potion, and raised my eyes to Esen.

“I wish to speak with Tre’Kato.” I said, quietly. She scowled. I tried again, in Liantharinan.

“I want to speak with He-Who-Rides-Alone.” But before the words were completely out of my mouth, I knew my request was not necessary.

I turned toward the second door in time to see him inside. He had changed, though his current robe was even more unassuming of the previous one. A simple dark green, and cotton besides. Almost the garb of a peasant.

He looked at me levelly. Then at my hand. He sighed and shocked his head.

“You want to speak with me? I assure you that your injury was nothing I had any desire for.”

I blinked, mystified. That he could care for my damaged hand was a wonder. I was his enemy, was I not? Yet something in me told me he was sincere in his sorrow on my behalf.

“I believe you.” I said, slowly. I eyed the other two. “I wish to speak with you alone.”

Esen was the first to answer. “No.” Her tone was flat. Depth said nothing, but he passed a glance with Tre’Kato. I wondered if they were Skilling. I couldn’t tell myself. My head was strange, as everything was clear at once. It was almost exhilarating. I breathed deeply.

“Very well. Esen, Depth… Wait outside if you please.” Esen scowled, but something in Tre’Kato politeness was compelling. She stalked out, marching away, followed by my unwilling crippler.

I looked at him again. He had nothing of the man who could raise an empire, I decided. I waited for him to speak. Tre’Kato lifted an eyebrow.

“I know why your charms don’t work as well as you want.” I told him, my heart hammering in my chest, for the shock of losing a finger or the herb I couldn’t tell.

He regarded me.

“Indeed. And why do you care?” He replied, blandly.

I nodded. “I don’t. But I care about… about the Prophet.”

He smiled at that.

I went on. “Is he safe?” The images I had tried not to think about, of glass beads woven with black skin, skimmed through my mind.

“I don’t know what you are used at, but I am no torturer, Chinh.” He said, wearily. “He is well. I won’t tell you where, but well. He hasn’t been harmed.”

I clenched my jaw. He had come to sit at the table close to me. He wasn’t eating anything, I noticed. Not even a glass of water.

“You killed Prilkop.” I winced at my own words, but he didn’t oppose the statement. He nodded, folding his hands in his sleeves in a way that reminded me of Vien.

“Indeed. It was necessary. He died without suffering, though he would have deserved pain. But it is not necessary to kill the current prophet. We have enough of what he could provide us.”

I eyed him. I had no reason to trust him. Yet I did not believe he was lying. I felt drawn to this, to now, to him. The image of a black dragon in ice came to my mind, and I shuddered as the wind of Aslejval touched me. What had we set in motion, I wondered, that would bring me there, and then to speak to this man?

“There is a rift, in your people.” I started slowly, sorting the thoughts my frenzied mind provided me. What we had learnt since coming here. And before. Tre’Kato regarded me levelly, without words. Waiting.

“Some want to leave Clerres for a new island. Some want to stay. Both would accept your choice. Mostly.” I added. I looked at him again, tearing my gaze from my chopped hand. Not now. Later. I couldn’t now.

He nodded, in the end. “This is true.” There was no commitment in his voice, but neither was there denial. I blinked and wondered at that man. I was in his hands, had been there for days. But he had not mistreated me, or Snowcloud, or, I knew with a strange certainty, the Fool. I sized him up. A scholar. Not a warrior. His eyes spoke of wariness and weariness. I had seen such gazes, in men who had seen too much blood spilled.

 The lamps shed a golden light upon everything. The only sounds were our voices and the endless chant of the waves. The night had silenced the gulls. The shiny fabrics reflected the light, giving the cushions and pillows and lacquered table a gleaming quality. It was like and unlike a dream. My mouth was suddenly parched. I reached with my whole hand for water. Words echoed in my mind, like brought forth by the wave.

_I wish it would all go away._

“If you will leave with your people, I’ll show you how to make your charms perfect.” My voice did not sound like my own.

Tre’Kato looked at me slowly. For an eternity, I looked at me. Dark eyes. Dark hair. I had once seen a distorting mirror, in a fair at Dushanbe, before I was King Chinh. For a moment I felt like I was looking into such an object, and I was looking not at Tre’Kato, but at my own reflection. It was not the Skill, or the Wit. It was something altogether different, like the swift smell of rain during the Dry Season. A scent of past futures. I could have been him. He could have been me.  My voice chanted the words in my mind. Mirror, mirror. I shook my head and blinked. The impression fled.

But I knew him now.

Tre’Kato nodded.

“I accept. You tell me how to make our charms perfect. We leave.” A small smile flickered over his lips. “Leaving or staying is the same to me.”

I breathed out. For a moment I thought about it. About telling him without a token. But I wasn't that far gone, or drugged enough for that.

“We shan’t drug you again. You shall be restricted to your room.” He added. I blinked and wondered if he now knew me as I knew him. The thought was disturbing.  I nodded slowly. The place would soon come alive with people. There was no much chance of me slipping out unnoticed. I was badly outnumbered. We both knew it.

“Release Snowcloud, and I’ll speak.” I said, at least. Tre’Kato nodded again and rose swiftly. He went to the door. I kept looking at the light, drinking more potion. Too much of the potion, perhaps. But thinking was needed now.

He came back. We waited. The moon appeared in the window. It was gibbous, white as a Fool’s skin, and luminous as the lamplight. The World spun on itself. I could feel it, spinning, spinning. Was it the drug I had drank, the one against pain, or was it the Wheel of Time the Whites talk about? I knew not.

Not five minutes later, I knew Snowcloud was free. She had bolted, and was running to me. I smiled in spite of everything.

I turned toward my reflection. He looked back at me, quietly.

“You make your charms as Whites have no emotion. Like they are bugs.” Words heard, when? Floating in my mind. I dismissed them. “This isn’t true. Make them as you would for humans, or dragons, or people.”

Tre’Kato’s eyebrows shot up.

“Everybody knows that Whites do not feel.” There was no hate when he spoke of them, I realised. Just the quiet detachment reserved to an enemy. It chilled me, somehow, more than outright hatred would have.

“Everybody is wrong.” I replied.

He closed his eyes and leaned on the chair. The door opened and Snowcloud bolted to me. She jumped, landing over me. A shock of pain from my hand tore a small sound from me. Snowcloud relented and washed my face with her mouth, in between growling at Tre’Kato. Her mind was a confused jumble of love for me and worry and hatred for the men who did that to me. I tried to assure her it had been an accident, for in truth it had been, but she wouldn’t listen. I petted her with my whole hand.

Tre’Kato watched us, thoughtfully.

“Give me a proof that the Whites have feelings that we can count when we make our charms against them.” I regarded him. It was clear he did not believe me, not really. I suspected that it was his normal behavior. Tre’Kato did not believe in taking new facts over a man’s word. Rather, he believe in testing an assertion, and to keep as good only what was true. His followers did much of the same.

I breathed in. “For me. He shall show feelings for me.” I said, softly. I knew it, as I knew the colour of the sky, or the sound of water. He would, for me.

Tre’Kato looked at me pensively. Then nodded.

He looked at my chopped hand. Then something like a resigned smile played over his lips.

“Esen shall show you your new room. I’ll tell you the result of my little… experiment, soon.”

He left. My hand was starting to hurt again. My head spin. Dimly, I wondered what I had set in motion.

I rested my forehead on the table. Words echoed in my mind.

_I wish it would all go away._

I would make sure it would, even if I could do nothing else.


	15. Wound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> This is the chapter also called "The Author is Evil 2, the Revenge"
> 
> Tomorrow I'll post the last chapter of Red!^__^

****

****

** Chapter Twelve: Wound **

 

 

 

_"During the time of White Seto, the Prophet found himself fighting against the Puppet Master._

_He was a human, a master puppeteer. His puppets were the best in Clerres, with faces as delicate as flowers and bodies so perfect that you expected breath from their chests. Kings and Queens and Rulers all over Clerres wished for his puppets._

_But he was not satisfied. He created, but his children, his puppets, were nothing compared to the living, breathing creatures that surrounded him. So the Puppet Master was never happy, and always sour. He made better and better marionettes, as big as humans but hollow and so light so they could be used with ease. And still it was not enough._

_Those last puppets were made in honour of White Seto himself. The White watched the play, an old tale of the First White Road, and stood silent. Then he went to the Puppet Master and spoke with him. He did it alone. Nobody heard._

_When White Seto left, the Puppet Master’s face was angry, but his eyes were far-away and thoughtful._

_He left his craft behind, and went to the Mountain. People spoke well of him then, thinking he had left to meditate about the Futures and the White Prophecies, as it is proper in your old age for people of means._

_But Wisdom was not the Puppet Master’s aim. For he longed to learn how to make his puppets live as children live and to unlock mysteries that were not his to know._

_He left, for many, many years, and Clerres forgot about him._

_When he came back, he had become a loathsome creature, for he had learnt how to give a semblance of life to his creations. People feared him, and they feared his creations, for they looked like people, with eyes that moved and mouths that spoke. But their eyes did not shed tears and their mouths did not laugh, for they had no feelings or emotions, and were colder than the ancient ice in Behit’s mountain._

_White Seto went then to the Puppet Master’s house to speak with him. Without Khanh, his Catalyst, he went. Up the mountains, in the cold and ice, till he found the hidden house of the Puppet Master._

_A day passed. Then two.Then three. The days became a tenday, and still White Seto was not back._

_So his Catalyst, Khanh, went to find him. She went into the dark, cold lair of the Puppet Master, and found White Seto. But there were two of them, and either could be the true one._

_So powerful was the magic of the Puppet Master._

_Khanh looked at the two forms moving in front of her, and striked. She slashed a cut over the forearm of both with her long dao, of which she was a master._

_And while White Seto’s wound wept tears of blood, the marionette’s cut had only splinters inside, because it was nothing but wood. So Khanh destroyed the marionette, and then faced the PuppetMaster._

_It is said that when they spoke, before she delivered the killing stroke, the Puppet Master told her these words:_

_“I tried to follow what White Seto said to me, so long ago. But now, I find myself by Seto’s own killed.”_

_And thus ends the story of the Puppet Master._

Stories and Legends of Behit

 

I don't know how long I stayed in the dining room. Time had lost all meaning for me.

I know that at length I rose from my sitting position, and wavered. The world danced around me, like it does in front of a drunk. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts and my vision. Colours melted and parted in front of me, the table and the wall and the cushions joining and separating like melting wax. I tried to take a step and almost fell when the ground wasn't where it should have been. The drugs, I thought. I knew not what it was, if elfbark orcarrisseed or something like and unlike both, but I knew what it was doing to me. Snowcloud whined, but even my sense of her was strange and shivering. I blinked and looked at where I knew she was.

She was a creature of silver and light and gold. I made a soft, pained nose and stumbled away. My shin caught on the table and I fell over it with a clatter of spilled glasses and upturned dishes. My companion bayed in distress, her blue eyes, so familiar in her unknown figure, pinning me where I was.

_Changer, Changer, brother mine._

I shook my head, unable to rise. I was shivering. A hard knot of something sat in my stomach. I desired to retch, to expel the poison I had been fed. But my body didn't allow me even that little relief. The smell of cold food assailed me, cloying and sickening.

_Changer ChangerChanger…_

I closed my eyes at Snowcloud's chant. I felt clammy and soiled and nauseous, and the world didn't stay still. Why couldn't everything be still, for a second? I shivered and huddled over the table, amidst the food spilt from the plates and mingled with the tainted water I had been given. My hand should have hurt, but it didn't. Dimly, I thought that pain would have been better than this strange, sickly feeling. Snowcloud jumped on the table and lay with me among the wreckage. I held her close to me gratefully. However she may look, I could still feel the familiar fur under my fingers and smell her clean wolf smell.  I breathed her in and plunged into darkness.

I opened my eyes again, looking around. I was not in the table anymore. The place was familiar in its shape if not in its colour. Everything felt sharp, every angle clear, every colour stark. It was like the World had forgotten its greys and browns and soft yellows in favour of glaring reds and bright oranges and lapis lazuli blues. It was a word that hurt my eyes. I was not used to it.

A figure was in the middle of the space. It’sshoulder was turned to me, and I could not see its face. I knew the space, and I had already seen the figure, but I couldn't recall where or who. I tried to shake my head, but I had none to shake. I tried to close my eyes, but I had no eyelids. I could only watch and hope for a swift end, even if I knew not anymore what swift meant.

Something opened. A door, I thought. And a second figure appeared in my line of vision. I knew this one well, too well to forget it, as well as I knew the beating of my own heart. Better, perhaps. My heart cried as I saw him. Yet he was wrong, as everything was. It was his burnished gold, but it seemed to shine from inside, as he was a sun, or a bonfire. No, he didn't burn. It looked like those fey fires up the hills that shepherds and travellers of all the World claims to see, that light without burning and without flame.

He looked at the other figure, his face tight. He was unharmed, I saw, and something in me surged. His clothes were perhaps more dirty than usual, and his hair less neat than I had come to expect, but I knew there was no blood on his person, nor poison in his veins. I could see that. I did not want to see that, and stopped looking, a new wave of nausea racking my body.

"Where is he?"

His voice rang wrong, as it would have in a cave. Echoes and dripping sounds mingled with it. I tried to concentrate. I was closer, now. I had not moved, but I was closer, somehow. I couldn't helpit, the brightness of my friend attracting me like a moth attracts a flame. I should have wondered if it would have consumed me, as I had often seen moths consumed by open candles. But I was not enough to wonder, or to worry.

"This is not what we are going to talk about, Prophet." The word was as sharp as a spear point, and it hurt just as much. We felt it, a jab between the ribs, close to the heart. We didn't answer. He was right.

We watched Tre'Kato, and we felt something close to hatred towards the human. We were tired and scared and sick with worry and full of a black hopelessness that felt like dying. I felt it, and yet I didn’t feel it, as I had and had not felt the pain in my hand while drugged. Yet even that wretched creature that was hurting us was a thing of beauty, with countless futures sparkling around him. Some scared us for they went beyond, in a place when I couldn’t see, like a path lost in darkness. But all the others were worse, for they ended surelyin blood and pain and death. I shuddered and wished I could close our eyes.

"No, we are going to talk about how you will help us. I am sure you will see the point." Tre'Kato's voice was warm honey, and we hated him for that. He took something from a table I had seen and not noticed, and gave it to us. It was a small box, the kind common in all Clerres, made of polished wood. We looked at it, and I felt dread. I tried to stop our hand from opening it, but I had no control. The hands felt strange and weird, and I dumped the box before I wrapped my fingers around it. They were too long, and my wrist bent at an odd angle. We clutched the wood, and I felt with preternatural clarity the grain of it. The whole body was strange, cool and burning at once, and every action spurned others, in an endless unveiling always, always present. Even the simple one of taking a box. Some small part that was still me wondered, is this how it feels to be the White Prophet?

My Keppet opened the box.

It clattered to the ground, the finger and part of the hand falling with a sickly wet sound. A wave of nausea so strong I could feel dimly, somewhere, my body retching enveloped us. I cried out, but I had no voice.

Tre'Kato spoke, softly.

"I am sure you will see the point of helping us, now. Or perhaps you would need an eye as a reminder?"

We watched the finger skid away. Nausea warred with pain and then anger, cold and desperate and deeper than anything that I, alone, had ever felt. I felt the body jump, long legs and strong muscles reacting like a cat's, and we were on top of Tre'Kato. He made a small, startled sound, but it was by far too late. His knees were caught in the table and he fell backwards, with us on top. Our knees found his chest and the air left his lugs. My friend raised his arm, his hand clutched into a clumsy fist. I watched as infinite futures shattered in nothingness as my Keppet fist smashed into Tre'Kato's nose and pain blossomed over his knuckles. A terrible sound filled the room. For a horrid second I was back in Regal's dungeon, and Bolt's fist had just hit me.

I screamed and opened my eyes.

 

The ceiling was above me. I could taste vomit in my mouth, and the air around me was full of the stench of long-spilled food. It was warm. The rays of the sun were too sharp and too bright, and yet strangely dull compared to the shining light of my Keppet. My clothes were soiled and disgusting. Snowcloud raised her head and looked at me, her blue eyes filled with concern, but she didn't speak. I sat up and trembled. My hand hurt worse than anything I could think about, but I welcomed it. It was better than the strange, distorted dreams the drug had given me.

If it had been a dream.

My skull pounded like a blacksmith's anvil and my mouth was parched. I groped around with my good hand till I found a pitcher of water unscathed by my falling. I greedily drank half of it, cherishing even what fell over my clothes, and threw the rest over my head. It coolness helped, and the pounding diminished.

I was wondering if I had the strength to rise when the door opened. Snowcloud growled and jumped to her feet, but I only looked up, too tired to move and fight. Yet my good hand closed over a serving knife. If my friend's punch had doomed us both I would not go alone.

Tre'Kato was paler than the night before. His nose too was different. It used to be straight and narrow, but now it was crooked and it had bleed until not long ago. His left eye was closed shut by a long narrow wound. I looked at him and saw myself. My hand clenched the kitchen knife.

He looked at me. For an eternity we looked at each other, and I wondered, absurdly, if in another life we could have been friends.

"We shall give you a room. Stand up. And leave that knife." His voice was tired and pained. I stood up. I would not be carried. Snowcloud pawed closed to me.

I did not leave the knife.

Esen appeared and looked at me with a scowl, but I was too busy trying to avoid tripping on every step, and trying to forget the pain in my hand to give it much importance. I felt tired. No, more than tired. I felt drained, like all life had been sucked out of me. I don't know how long we walked, but it must not have been long, for I would not have been able to walk for long. Esen opened a room and I stumbled inside. I felt the lock close behind me.

"Beloved!"

His voice was not unlike music. Snowcloud bayed a little, and I lifted my eyes to him. He was not shining, I thought. How come he was not shining?

He was at my side faster than I would have thought possible. I let him drag me toward the bed. I remember little of what happened next. I remember his gasp as he saw my crippled hand. I remember his care and tenderness as he undressed me and put me to bed. I remember his deft hands changing the bandages, and a pendant slipping over my shoulders.

I wanted to sleep, but there was something I had to do. Clumsily, as I had not in an age, I reached for Bitter Moon through our bond. It was still blocked in part, like a road is blocked by a ravine, but I managed to send a message to her. I waited for her puzzled acceptance.

Then I fell asleep.

 

Sounds like crates and cases being moved. I frowned. I did not want to wake. I fought to plunge back in the depth of unconsciousness but the shouting voices far away were too insistent.

I opened my eyes.

It was dark again, and my friend was sitting by me. His eyes met mine, dark and deep and full of such a great sorrow I couldn't comprehend it, let alone understand it. I put my good hand over his. He turned his own palm up, and squeezed my fingers softly.

"Fitz?"

I nodded. I licked my lips.

"I am sorry, Keppet." I managed. He scowled at my rough voice and filled a glass of water. I drank all of it, gratefully.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. It is my fault. All of it." His tone pained me, as did his guilt. I shook my head.

"No. It was an accident, Fool. An accident. I tried to escape, and fell, and the door of the cell cut away my finger." He looked at me, understanding warring with remorse in his gaze.

"That is not what they let me believe."

I sighed and tried to relax in the bed. The cushions were soft under my head. I longed for more sleep.

"Yes. I know." I looked at him. He was more naked than I had ever seen him, more than when he was only a dead body in my arms and I prepared him for a pyre he would have no use for. His eyes were dark and huge, and so full of trust in me that it hurt my chest. He had trusted me, and I had used him. For a moment, the sorrow and shame were so great I could barely breathe.

He must have seen something, in our bond or in my face, because he frowned and looked away.

"Explain." His tone was soft.

So I did. I told him of my overheard conversation and my injury and what I had surmised. I told him of my pact with Tre'Kato. When I spoke of how I had told that man that he would feel for me, I saw his shoulder tense.

I spoke till I had no more to say, then I went silent, exhausted. Snowcloud whined keenly in her sleep.

"I… see." He stood up and went to the window. It was a high, narrow slit, facing the rice plains. I watched him and stood silent.

He sighed. The sound seemed to be drawn from the depths of him. Outside, the sounds of movement and people talking continued unabated. One time or two, I thought I recognized a voice. Tre'Kato, perhaps, or Altanjin. I wondered if it was indeed them, or somebody else.

"You did to me what I had often done to you. Perhaps this too, is right." My Keppet said, quietly. I had no answer for this, so I said nothing.

"How long… how long has it been?" I asked. He did not turn toward me, his slender hand over the window sill. He turned his head toward me and cracked a smile.

"Two days. We had been given food, and water." I recalled eating, in the hazy fashion you recall a fever-induced dream. I nodded, slowly. "We are prisoners still."

I said nothing again. I looked at him, and knew we were not in danger. I sighed.

"They are leaving." I said, and as I spoke the sounds took on a new meaning. I wondered how Tre'Kato had arranged it with the others. Had he used Depth's Skill? How had it come about, that a Six Duchies Skilled one had ended up here, in Clerres, serving a rebel? I shook my head, tired again. Too many questions.

I raised my crippled hand and looked at it. It didn't hurt anymore. I knew that, if I unwrapped the bandage, I would find healed flesh and unscarred skin, but there was nothing that the Skill could do for the places where flesh and skin and bone were simply gone. I would have to learn how to live with four fingers. My hand looked strange, slender and too small. I averted my eyes.

The door opened a crack. A tray with food and water and a bowl of meat appeared. The door quickly closed again, and the click of the lock sounded inexorable in the darkness.

My friend sighed and went to retrieve the food. We didn't speak as we ate. I said nothing, even as I recognized the subtle taste in the food. Kaira leaves, for a long sleep. A day and a night. I glanced at the closed door and ate.

I knew that, upon waking, we would be alone in the castle.

Then I looked at my friend, his eyes downcast and his posture tense, and wondered if he would ever forgive me.


	16. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Serie11, who is helping me A LOT! She is a wonderful beta :D
> 
> COLOUR OF ROSES IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED :D
> 
> I APOLOGIZE FOR THE DELAY.
> 
> I was without a pc for all last week and without a way to find my file. I am still without a pc but I have found my file. I'll post this today and the first part of the last part/epilogue as soon as I can. Sorry :( :( :(

 

 

 

 

**_Interlude_ **

 

 

_The city is silent in the full strength of the summer sun._

_The grasses are yellow and dead. Nothing moves in the hottest hour. Not even a breath of wind to alleviate the heath. Only the river, or what is left of it, still murmurs among its now taller banks. In the mud, prints of paws and hooves are left to dry in the sun, a tale of thirst and fatigue, and in some place the mud is tinted with the red of blood and the tracks tell a different story._

_The city is close to the river, its flanks caressed by the current, but not built over it. Water mangles charms._

_On the other side of the waterway there is a small grove of tall trees, their leathery leaves looking dusty and almost dead. Their shadow is one of the few comforts in the sun-backed land._

_It had not rained in two moons._

_Under the trees’ shadow an encampment is ringed. There are no tents in summer, only sleeping mats over the softest grasses that they could find. The place is orderly, with food suspended from branches so that no animal can reach it and wood for cooking neatly stacked._

_But it is as immaculate as it is empty._

_Soft sounds come from the river. Six people lay in the river, seeking solace from the sun restless rays. They splash and talk and laugh, enjoying the coolness of the water. Five are big boned and dark, made darker by the sun, with heavy bones upon their eyes. The six is slender and fair, with a wisp of brown, fine hair and green eyes that look at everything and a small chubby hand in his mouth._

_Two other women laugh when the child suddenly splash the water with both his open palms and then squeal in surprise. Their bellies are round and they move heavily but their eyes are full of joy in looking at the healthy, strong boy. This is the second summer for the child, born the year before. He is a promise for all of the five._

_Coa looks down and smiles at her son._

_Her child that won’t die._

_The small city awaits._

_The circular buildings are vacant and silent. The garish colours themselves seem mute. The streets, spirals and circles, are empty. Nothing seems to move or live here, now. The bright blue sky and the warmth of the hair bespoke of summer, but there is no flower, no tree to herald summertime._

_Even the stark young mountains, here merely a far-away shadow on the horizon, harbour more promise for life than is held in the cold, precise stone, painted with lively shades._

_But the mountains are young, and the city is old._

_The wind alone howls in the paved roads, making the charms over the doors and windows jingle. More magic is strewn along the city: any street is a strand, any building a bead. Every colour is part of the magic, every shade and hue strengthens it._

_The whole city is a charm against the ravages of time, made by a people that know Time well._

_A figure stands still on one of the tallest balconies. Immobile, it looks more like one of the statues than as a person, for his skin and hair have the colour of stone. Only his clothes, brightly coloured and gay, show him as living creature, and not a statue. His eyes are big, too big for his face, and lookto the front, unrelenting._

_A scream echoes in the dark and Vanyel flinches, turning his head to look at the door behind him. A gust of wind catches a lock of his hair and the Dhil’a moves the feathers around his face, bringing the rebel lock back at his place._

_The scream ceases. Vanyel breathes._

_The door opens in the night and a figure walks outward. The Seer’s eyes focus on his Dhil’a’s left leg, and a flash of anger lights his dark eyes. A bigger, stout figure on four legs stands in the shadow. He thins his lips._

_“The baby is born. It is a female.” Flint’s voice is soft and clear, Vanyel breaths again, inhaling the sharp scent of blood and birth fluids. He nods._

_“This is the eighth child in ten years. Vanyel this is…” Flint’s voice dies with the wind. Vanyel says nothing. He nods, simply, looking again at the walls of the city. For a while, the winter wind is the only voice in the dark, glittering night._

_“Mirka will be well.” Flint hesitates. He takes a deep breath and speaks at his Dhil’a shoulders._

_“Tushia and Tyar are going back to the Tribe’s summer pastures. They want to speak with other women. They plan to leave their children here.”_

_Vanyel sighs and his shoulders sag._

_“They will come. The women.And the men, following them.” Vanyel’s voice is not stronger than the wind, and just as inhuman. Flint looks at his Dhil’a, then at the steppes beyond the city, in the darkness. He remembers split lips and black eyes._

_The human nods slowly and put his arm around Vanyel’s shoulders._

_Their eyes are fixed on the place, beyond the walls, where the small encampment waits to become bigger._

_The child wails behind them, in the safety of the house and of his mother’s arms._

_The dying city hears the sound of life._

_The Future happens._


End file.
